


Echoes

by Clowns_or_Midgets



Series: For Your Life [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dead John Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Drama, Grief/Mourning, Mary Winchester Lives, Medical Procedures, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-06-29 14:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 54,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19832164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clowns_or_Midgets/pseuds/Clowns_or_Midgets
Summary: The Winchesters’ story started with a demon, a fire and John's death. Twenty-two years later, there is another fire, another death. Mary and Dean leave their unique approach to hunting and return home to support Sam. But how much support can you give a man who doesn't feel anything? And then Sam has a dream... Part One of The For Your Life VerseBeta'd by KtoonPre-read by VegasGranny and Ncsupnatfan





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my new story. This is not an uncommon concept—John dies/Mary lives—but I have done my best to put my own spin on it.  
> The Mary part of the story came from a prompt from Samuel William Winchester. Another part of the story —a part that we’re not at yet — came from prompts by Souless666 and Rafaela Amanda. They wanted Sam using his powers and that’s going to be happening later.  
> We will not be following canon events past this chapter apart from Azazel as an antagonist and the special children concept. The rest of the story is my own creation. I hope I can keep it interesting for you.  
> Thank you Ktoon for beta’ing this for me. You have been great with my rapid-fire writing speed.  
> Thanks you immeasurably to Ncsupnatfan and VegasGranny for signing up to be pre-readers. Those ladies have been with me each step of the way. They dealt with constant flowing chapters and emails full of questions and pleas for guidance, and they stepped up each and every time. This story could never have been written without them. If there is something you like, odds are that it came from them. Ktoon and Jenjoremy also stepped up to answer questions in the beginning, so thank you to them, too.  
> This is the first of a series of stories that form an overall arc. If you imagine each story as a quarter of a season—instead of individual storylines with an overall climax for each—it will make sense.  
> This first chapter has suicidal thoughts.  
> Thank you for being willing to give the story a try.

**_Chapter One_ **

****

Sam and Jessica strolled along the street with their hands linked between them.

They’d spent the last hour in Scotty’s Bar, enjoying a quiet beer and talking. Sam hadn’t wanted to go, he’d thought he would have been better off looking over the notes he’d made for his law school interview the next day and practicing questions with Jessica, but she’d persuaded him a break would be good, and she’d been right. She usually was.

For him, the rest of what he wanted in life hinged on the interview. It could get him a place in law school with a scholarship that would make it possible. It would give him something to offer Jessica as a future. It would finally give him the confidence to take the ring in its small, blue jewellery box out of his sock drawer and offer it to her.

He thought she would say yes, no matter how the interview went, but Sam wanted to give her the best. She deserved it. She gave him the best with her love.

He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Mary or Dean about the interview, or even his LSAT scores. He’d tried to call when he got them, but it went straight to voicemail without ringing. The last time he’d spoken to them they were finishing up a case with the Oregon cops, but Mary had thought they’d found a wendigo in the state, too, so Sam figured they’d gone after that.

He was disappointed that he couldn’t get hold of them even _that_ morning, as it was November second, the anniversary of John’s death, and they always tried to talk that day, even if they couldn’t get together.

When they could be together for the day, they would share beers and talk about memories of him. At least Mary and Dean would share memories, and Sam would listen avidly, storing new stories about the father he could never remember and listening to his favourites, like the time John proposed and dropped the ring in the grass so he and Mary had to spend thirty minutes on their hands and knees, feeling around for it in the dark.

The best story was of their first meeting, as it was very similar to Sam and Jessica’s. Mary and been coming out of the movies, having just seen Slaughterhouse-Five, when she bumped into John and knocked him down. John had laughed it off and promised to forgive her in exchange for a cup of coffee. She’d agreed, and the rest was history.

Sam and Jessica’s story was only a little different. Their first meeting had been orchestrated by their friend Brady, and he’d made such a point of telling Sam how great the girl he wanted him to meet was that it had made him nervous. He’d tackled his nerves with tequila, and it was on his way to the bar for another drink that he’d bumped into Jessica and knocked her flying. In his drunken attempt to save her from the fall he’d toppled over and landed on his ass among a group of freshmen.

Thinking, drunkenly, that the only way to salvage the moment with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was charm, Sam had grappled for a line Dean would have been proud of. He’d never had Dean’s charm though, and, “I think I’ve fallen for you,” had slipped from his lips instead.

He’d cringed at the cheesy line, but Jessica had laughed and held out a hand to help him up. The woman Brady had been planning to introduce him to forgotten, Sam had asked if he could buy Jessica a drink, and she’d readily agreed.

They were still closeted together in a corner thirty minutes later when Brady had found them. Sam had been instantly apologetic, only then remembering the woman he was supposed to be meeting, but Brady had said, “I guess you guys didn’t need me after all,” and wandered away again without explanation.

Confused enquiries revealed that Jessica was also planning to meet someone her friend Brady wanted to introduce her to, and the seal had been set on a perfect evening. They’d talked to each other until the bar had closed, and then Sam had walked Jessica home to her sorority house. He had chanced a kiss on her cheek before saying goodbye, and then practically floated home.

Sam had never believed in love at first sight before, but his mind had been changed that night. He was hooked.

Mary always swore it was love at first sight for her and John. That had made Sam happy as it had been the same for him with Jessica, and he felt he shared little else with his father.

He couldn’t remember John at all. He knew his face from the few photographs that had survived the fire and water damage, and he knew the stories—like how he’d loved softball and had brought Sam the smallest mitt the store had sold the day he was born—but he had no memory of his voice. He had never seen his frown as he was always smiling in the photographs that survived. He had nothing of his father that just belonged to him, no memory that was theirs alone. He only had what Mary and Dean shared. 

He’d never felt like he was deprived of love growing up, and he had a surrogate father in the form of Bobby, but he’d never had anyone to call ‘Dad’. He knew he had it easier than Dean, as he had a chance to build those memories but had lost them, so he really knew what was missing. And Mary was missing the love of her life.

“You’re thinking deep thoughts, baby,” Jessica said, squeezing Sam’s hand.

“I’m thinking about my Dad,” Sam explained.

“Of course. I forgot the date. Did you get speak to your Mom and Dean?”

“No, they’re probably busy working a case. They’ll call when they can.”

Apart from the fact of the ring nestled in his drawer, the one secret Sam kept from Jessica was the truth of the world and his family’s place in it as hunters. He was honest with everything else, and he only kept that secret to protect her. She knew some of the truth: Mary and Dean were professional private investigators who sometimes worked with the cops, but she didn’t know the rest. As much as Sam hated hiding things from her, that secret was one that he’d sworn to himself he would never reveal. Her life was normal, her only real fear was of spiders, and Sam wasn’t going to spoil that for the sake of absolute honesty.

They reached the front door of their apartment and Jessica rooted in her purse for her keys.

“Lost them again?” Sam teased.

“No, I’ve…got them!” she said triumphantly, pulling the key with its many jangling fobs from her purse. She unlocked the door and then turned back when Sam hesitated. “Aren’t you coming in?”

Sam bit his lip. “I thought I should check on Brady.”

She sighed. “Yeah, probably a good idea.”

They were both worried about their friend. Something had happened to Brady during summer break. He’d come back to Stanford a different person. He was drinking too much, getting high, and he’d dropped out of pre-med three weeks earlier. He had been a steady person before, serious about his studies while still knowing how to have fun, but now he only seemed concerned with where the next party was.

Sam didn’t understand, and he thought it was more than senior fatigue or stress. He suspected something had happened to Brady that he wasn’t ready to share, and he was sure that if Brady would just open up about it, they could get him back on track again.

“Do you want me to come?” Jessica asked.

“No, I’ll go.” By this time of night, Brady was probably a mess, high, drunk and belligerent, and Sam thought Jessica was better off not seeing him like that.

“Okay.” She kissed him, only needing to tilt her head up to reach his height in her heels, and said, “I’ll see you soon.”

Sam hugged her and saw her in the door before turning and walking back along the street towards Brady’s apartment.

It was only a block away, and Sam let himself in through the unlocked front door of Brady’s building and went up the stairs. He noticed the lack of pounding music as he knocked on the door, which made him suspect he was out as the thumping was usually a constant presence in his apartment now—much to his neighbors’ annoyance—but he knocked loudly anyway and called Brady’s name.

When there was no response, he knocked again and then pulled his phone out of his pocket. He hit the speed dial for Brady and lifted the phone to his ear. It rang through to voicemail and Sam left a message asking Brady to call before hanging up and heading back outside onto the street.

He glanced up as he walked toward home and saw what he should have noticed before: Brady’s windows were dark. He was probably out partying. There was a Día de los Muertos party at Sigma Nu house that night, and Sam supposed he’d gone there. He probably wouldn’t get a call back until the next afternoon when Brady had finally slept off all he’d imbibed at the party.

He considered going to the party to find him, but he knew it would end with Brady trying to get him to indulge in something Sam didn’t want to try, and maybe harsh words. Brady thought Sam’s college experience was lacking without the chemical influence he gave his own. Sam had once tried a few tokes on a joint, but he hadn’t liked the way it made him feel. He hadn’t hunted properly in years, not since he started college, but he didn’t like his reflexes slowed and his thoughts muddled. It felt wrong, as if he was putting himself at risk of attack.

He walked quickly back to his apartment and took the keys from his pocket to let himself in. He heard the TV playing in Bea and Mark’s apartment as he passed their door and the loud voices of the Kaplinskys’ and the slamming of a door passing theirs. He guessed their son Alex was kicking up again. He was currently in the throes of teen-angst and his parents were struggling to handle it. He was a good kid usually, though he had a huge crush on Jessica and seemed to see Sam as the enemy. Jessica denied it, saying he was just friendly, but she was always unaware of the effect she had on men and boys.

Sam let himself into his apartment and tripped over the pair of red heels that had been discarded by the door. Chuckling, he picked them up and placed them tidily on the shoe rack.

Jessica loved heels and almost always wore them when they would go for a night out, but the moment she got back inside she kicked them off with a sigh that made it sound like a religious experience.

“Jess, I’m home,” Sam called, walking into the living room.

She wasn’t there, but he heard the shower running in the bathroom off of the bedroom, so he wandered in and sat down on the bed. He knew Jess would be a while, so he took out his phone and dialled Mary’s number. He thought he would leave a message for her if she didn’t answer so that they would know he’d been thinking of them and John when they were able to pick it up.

It went straight through to voicemail and Sam sat down on the bed as he said, “Hey, Mom, it’s me. Just wanted to check in today. Hope you and Dean are…”

His words trailed off as something wet dripped on his cheek. He wiped at it and saw it was red. Confused, he looked up and then cried out inarticulately as he saw his nightmare come to life. 

Jessica was pinned to the ceiling, her arms spread and her eyes wide. The white of her nightgown was red across her stomach with the blood that was dripping down onto Sam.

“Jess!” he shouted. “No!”

Jessica’s mouth moved as if she was trying to talk, but Sam couldn’t hear any words over the slamming of his heart in his ears.

Dropping his phone, he jumped onto the bed and reached for her, but the ceilings in the old apartment were high, and his hand swiped the air two feet away from her. 

“Jess, oh god, Jess!”

Suddenly, she was engulfed in roaring flames that spread from her over the ceiling without a clear source other than Jessica herself. For a moment, Sam was able to see her terrified face before it was occluded by the flames. Sam reached for her again, but the heat pushed him back irresistibly and licked down toward him, knocking him from the bed onto the floor as the flames spread to the walls and the drapes caught. The fire alarm started to blare.

Sam’s hands were in his hair, yanking on the strands, and Jessica’s name continued to rip from him as he stared up at the fiery ceiling. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t waking up. This was his nightmare, one he’d had many times, but he wasn’t waking up this time. He always woke up.

He yanked harder on his hair, hoping the pain would bring him out of the dream, but it remained stubbornly real.

Something fell on him and he felt the pain of a burn on his forearm.

The smoke caught in his throat, making him choke, and he knew he had to get out, but he had no will. If this was real, if he really wasn’t waking up this time, it meant Jessica was dead. He had no desire to live without her, so he would die with her.

The smoke filled the room, and Sam drew it into his lungs. He was choking and gasping but determined to stay among the flames and until the smoke had done its deed, killing him so he could be with Jessica again.

Suddenly someone slammed into him from the side and shouted his name in his ear.

Sam fought, but the smoke was making his head swim and his body feel disconnected from him. He felt himself being dragged away as he continued to shout Jessica’s name. The air grew fresher, and Sam gasped at it against his will, survival instinct overpowering his will to die.

He was in the light of the stairwell and he recognized Brady’s shouting voice as he tried to lead him to the stairs.

The fire alarm was still blaring, but the sound was suddenly quelled by the deafening blast of an explosion. Sam felt impact in the small of his back and then he was weightless. It could only have been a second before Sam hit the floor, but it felt like a lifetime.

He landed hard and pain exploded in his head and back. Darkness swept over him and his last thought was a wish for it to end there, for him to not wake up again.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Chapter Two_ **

The trees were starting to thin, and Mary breathed a sigh of relief at the thought that they were almost out. They had been deep in the freezing Mount Jefferson Wilderness for days, hunting down a wendigo, and now it was over, Mary wanted to be somewhere warm where she could finally take her boots off. 

They had found the history of attacks on the database of the state police while they had been investigating a missing person’s case. She and Dean were sometimes brought in by the PDs themselves, other times they offered their investigative services pro bono to the families of people they thought were victims of the supernatural. They took paid civilian cases, too, which covered their living expenses and other life necessities, but the bulk of their income came from Mary’s stake in the Lawrence Garage she co-owned with Mike Guenther and her stake in Bobby’s salvage yard and restoration business.

When she’d met him, Bobby had been occupied with salvage and occasional repairs to cover his hunting and living expenses, but a few years ago, with Dean’s help, they’d added the restoration business together. They made good money with it. The benefit of the restorations was that they could do it in their own time. Bobby found the cars, and when there was time between hunts, he and Dean worked on bringing them back to their former glory. Bobby dealt mostly with the mechanics and Dean took care of the bodywork. He had a talent for it, even more than with his impressive technical engine skills that he’d learned from Bobby.

Dean had always been more of a physical person that Sam. He had done well in school, but he preferred working with his hands. Sam was the one that loved to study anything and everything. To him, the world was a complex riddle he wanted to solve with the clues in the form of all the information he could gather. He wanted to learn everything he could as fast as he could. Dean was good with lore where it pertained to hunting as he could see its purpose, but there had always been good-natured teasing between him and Sam about his ‘geek’ brother. Sam was the one that researched lore for pleasure, and he’d read a good portion of the library of books Mary inherited from her parents by the time he’d left for college.

Her boys shared equally the greatest strengths of their grandfather and often surpassed them. Samuel Campbell had been a lore expert and Sam followed in his footsteps there, and Dean followed the skilled hunter side of him.

Since his first hunt at the age of fifteen, a vengeful spirit case (of which the build-up to the event had given Mary nightmares) Dean had known he was going to hunt. The day he graduated high school, he gave Mary his diploma to frame and then eagerly left for a werewolf case with Bobby. He hadn’t stepped out of the life since.

Four years after Dean’s first vengeful spirit, Mary had given Sam the same chance to take a hunt, and she’d found him his own ghost. Sam had taken care of it, and Mary knew he’d felt some thrill in it and the cases he took after that, but it was never going to be his life.

She liked that they were different in their approaches and passions. They balanced each other out perfectly.

She had never wanted to hunt again after she met John, but she’d gone on with her parents for a while until, the day her parents had died and she’d made her deal to save John, she’d sworn to herself that she’d never hunt again.

She had kept that promise with one exception—to kill the werewolf that had escaped her and Samuel in her hunting days—until John died. Then she’d returned to the life, developing contacts again. Some of them, like Bobby, had become family. And with them, and alone, she’d saved lives. It was her way to repent for the life she hadn’t been able to save—the life she had cost by staying in bed that night.

The anniversary of that loss had come and gone for another year, and Mary and Dean had marked it sharing stories, memories and a couple beers at their campsite on the way to the cave system she’d tagged as the wendigo’s territory. Mary was upset that they hadn’t been able to speak to Sam on the day as they usually did, but there had been no signal since they left her Jeep behind. She wondered how he had passed the day, if he’d been okay. Jessica would have been with him, so he wouldn’t have been alone, but there was no one to tell him the stories Mary knew he loved.

They were almost back at the Jeep now though, and they would be able to call him. Dean would be able to brag to his little brother about his win against the wendigo—he had taken it down with a homemade flamethrower without getting a scratch himself as they’d caught it hibernating—and they could find out if Sam had his scores yet. He should as he had taken the LSAT two weeks ago. Mary and Dean had discussed them as they had hiked toward the mountain, and Dean had teased her for her nerves, telling her they both knew Sam had rocked them.

Mary checked her phone and saw there was still no signal. Dean took out his own and cursed. “No battery,” he said. “We must have been underground too long.”

They had brought solar charge packs with them, but the inability of the sunlight to penetrate into the deep forest enough to give them decent power meant they weren’t that useful even before they got underground, and they’d agreed to concentrate on keeping Mary’s charged rather than trying to fill both batteries with the limited supply of power.

“We have the charger cord in the Jeep,” Mary said. “We’re almost there.”

“Thank god,” Dean said. “I need a shower and some sleep on a real bed. Bedrolls are better than the ground, but not by much. We should have invested in air mattresses.”

Mary smiled wryly, knowing she was being teased. “I told you that we could get some if you carried them. I figured we were already loading ourselves down with the tent and other gear.”

“I know,” Dean said with an exaggerated sigh. “We should have brought Sam with us. We could have loaded him up, too. He would have been useful instead of going to _class._ ” He made the word an insult.

Mary rolled her eyes. Dean was as proud as anyone of the success Sam was making of college, but he couldn’t help needling him about it, and Mary in his absence.

“We didn’t need him for the kill though,” Mary said, redirecting him before he could hit his stride. “You took it down.”

“Hell yeah I did,” Dean said proudly. “And there were no lives lost.”

“That’s the aim,” Mary reminded him with approval.

“Yep.” Dean adjusted the straps of his large backpack and carried on along the trail.

Unlike when she hunted with her parents, darting from crisis to crisis, Mary and Dean tried to pre-empt hunts before people were hurt when they could. They traced signs and took action straight away. It was easier as she had access to records and technology her parents never did, and Dean had an instinct for it. There were still crises to deal with—not all monsters left signs that weren’t deaths—but they did what they could for as many as they could.

“I see it,” Dean said, increasing his pace.

Mary jogged after him and said, “The Jeep?”

“Yeah. Can’t you?”

Mary squinted ahead and, though there was a lighter area, she couldn’t see a flash of silver that would be her Jeep.

“Not yet,” she admitted, knowing she was opening herself to Dean’s amusement.

“You’re getting old, Mom,” he said. “Your eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Maybe it’s time you think about taking a step back from the life. I can take care of the hunts, and soon Sam will be able to support you in your old age while he’s earning his bigshot lawyer bucks.”

“I’m not old,” Mary said quickly, though she was now fifty-one and starting to feel it. “I can still run circles around you.”

“Because I let you,” Dean said sweetly. “I don’t want to bruise your ego.”

Mary laughed and shook her head. As nuts as it made her sometimes, she loved this side of her son. When he was on a hunt, he was completely focused on what had to be done, but the rest of the time he let his love for life come to the fore. He was almost perfectly content in his world. The only thing missing from his life was his father.

They walked on only a little further before Mary saw the silver of the Jeep and knew they were nearly out. Almost at the same moment, Mary’s phone beeped in her pocket with waiting voicemails.

She lengthened her stride, eager to get the heavy bag off her back and to hear the messages, and Dean laughed. “Now you’re moving.”

He sped his own pace, and it became a race of fast walks to the Jeep interspersed with laughter.

Mary dropped the backpack onto the floor and handed Dean the keys from her pocket so that he could load them in the back and she could listen to her voicemails. Dean opened the doors and loaded them onto the empty rear seats as the trunk was full of the custom weapons cases he and Bobby had designed.

Mary leaned against the hood as she dialled up her voicemail and smiled as she heard Sam’s voice.

“Sammy?” Dean called to her and she nodded.

_“Hey, Mom, it’s me. Just wanted to check in today. Hope you’re…”_

Mary frowned as Sam’s voice trailed off and there was a moment of silence before she heard him shout Jessica’s name. There was raw panic in his voice that sent shivers down Mary’s spine.

As he shouted for her again and there was the sound of the phone hitting something hard—she assumed the floor—the color drained from Mary’s face.

Sam was still shouting, but now there was a new sound, a crackling she had heard many times, the most penetrating memory of the worst night of her life. It sounded like fire. An alarm started to blare on the recording, and Mary’s heart raced.

“Dean,” she said tersely.

“What’s up?” Dean asked, walking towards her and finally catching sight of her white face. “What’s wrong, Mom? Is Sam okay?”

Mary shook her head, the phone still pressed tight to her ear as she heard the sounds of her son’s anguished cries.

Dean leaned close to hear the call, and Mary forced her muscles to unlock so he could hold the phone between then. She heard Dean’s breaths speeding as racking coughs began on the line and them the cruel beep of an ended message.

Mary lowered the phone to her side and stared ahead in shock. She was frozen into inaction by terror.

“What was that?” Dean asked quietly.

Mary tried to answer, but her throat seemed to have swollen shut. She licked her dry lips and swallowed, then said in a rasp, “It sounded like a fire.”

Dean snatched the phone out of her numb hand and checked the screen. “There’s more messages.”

He pressed the buttons and then held the phone between them on speaker as a professionally neutral voice said, _“This is a message for Mary Winchester. Sam Winchester has been admitted to Sequoia Hospital, Redwood City. If you could call us back on this number, we can give you more information.”_

A number was reeled off, and Dean mouthed the digits as he wrote them into the dirt on the hood of the Jeep with his finger.

Before Mary could hang up, a new message started to play, and Bobby’s worried voice came through. _“Mary, call me. Sam’s been hurt. He’s in Sequoia Hospital. I’m on my way to California now. Call me as soon as you get this.”_

Mary waited for another message, but there was no more. Sam hadn’t called. She didn’t want to think of why he wouldn’t have called her, what it could mean, but the horrifying thoughts came of their own volition, making her hands tremor.

“We’ve got to go,” Dean said, shaking her arm. “Come on, Mom!”

Mary yanked open the driver’s side door and slid in behind the wheel, dropping the phone onto Dean’s lap. He passed her the keys and the turned them in the ignition, bringing the engine to life. She slammed the car into gear and the wheels skidded against dirt as they raced forward along the narrow road.

“Call Bobby,” Mary said quickly,

Dean dialled in the number and held the phone between them so they could both hear.

It rang four times before Bobby answered, _“Mary! About damn time. Where are you?”_

“What happened to Sam?” Mary asked, speaking over Dean’s own demands for information.

 _“There was a fire,”_ Bobby said.

“Is he…” Mary couldn’t finish the question; she was scared of the answer.

 _“He’s alive,”_ Bobby said, and Mary swallowed a sob. _“The doctors say he’s stable. Where are you? I’ve been calling for days.”_

“We’re in Oregon,” Dean said. “Just heading towards Culver City now.”

 _“You are still in Oregon,”_ Bobby said with what sounded like relief. _“I was hoping you would be. I’ve been keeping track of the airlines. I can’t get you a flight until this evening, so you’re going to be slower flying. You should drive.”_

“It’s an eight-hour drive!” Dean said angrily, and Mary knew he was thinking the same as her—it was too damn long.

 _“It’s the fastest way,”_ Bobby said. _“And Sam’s stable now.”_

“Tell him we’re coming,” Mary said, skidding out off of the hardpacked-earth road and onto the highway.

 _“Yeah,”_ Bobby said awkwardly. _“I’ll tell him.”_

“What aren’t you telling us?” Mary asked, pressing her foot down on the accelerator now she could get some real speed building on the open road.

 _“He’s not conscious yet,”_ Bobby said gently.

Dean groaned and Mary took a deep breath, blocking out the sounds of the car and focusing on keeping calm for a moment before saying, “Tell him we’re coming. Call if anything changes.”

 _“I will._ _I’ll see you soon.”_

The call disconnected, and Dean dropped the phone down onto his lap.

“It sounds bad, Mom,” he said, his voice sounding very small.

“He’s going to be fine,” Mary said, forcing confidence and calm into her voice. “We’ve got to go through Culver City to get to the interstate. I’ll drop you at the motel to get the Impala and our stuff.”

“The hell with that!” Dean snapped. “I need to get to Sam.”

“We need the stuff from my bag,” Mary said, trying to reason with him. “The copies of his insurance papers. We don’t know if Sam lost his card in the fire. I need you to do this for me, Dean.” She fixed her eyes on the road, but she could feel Dean’s gaze boring into her.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “You’ve got to go fast though. As soon as you’ve dropped me off, go get there. I’ll be right behind you as soon as I’ve cleared the room.”

“I will,” Mary promised.

They did need their stuff from the motel—the hospital would need Sam’s insurance details and she wasn’t sure if Bobby would have thought to take them from the copies at the house—but more than that she needed space. She couldn’t be weak in front of Dean, and yet she had never felt weaker. Sam was hurt, unconscious in some hospital, and she wasn’t there. He needed her, his mother, and she was five-hundred miles away with hours of driving between her and him.

Bobby said he was stable, but that was _all_ he had said. She could read around the words and knew there was something he wasn’t telling her.

She was terrified she was going to lose her son, just like she had lost John. 


	3. Chapter 3

**_Chapter Three_ **

****

The drive was hell.

Dean caught up to Mary on the interstate, and they kept pace with each other in the slow traffic that was made worse by a pileup on Route 97. When they cleared that, they were able to build some speed again before coming to the slower roads around the city.

Stopping for gas was torture as the tank wouldn’t fill fast enough, and when the clerk at the gas station on the California border had trouble running his card, Dean nearly reached over the counter and strangled him. It was only the fact they had to keep their records clean for their jobs that stopped him, a stupid thing to care about when there was something so much more important waiting for him at the end of the journey.

The fact he had been teasing his mother on the way out of the forest and had been thinking of how he could brag to Sam about how he’d killed a wendigo while Sam had spent the week with his head in books seemed awful now—like he’d let him down. He and Mary had both had done that already. They’d spoken about getting a satellite phone for ages, but they’d never gotten around to it. If they’d had one, Bobby would have been able to get hold of them as soon as it happened. They could have been there sooner. They could have helped.

When he finally saw the high white face and glowing windows of the hospital ahead of him, Dean yanked the wheel to the left to overtake a minivan that was taking its sweet time moving and turned into the parking lot. It was late and there were spaces, so Dean skidded into the first spot he saw and threw himself out of the car. He ran to the entrance, not waiting for his mother, even though he saw her turning into a spot only a few cars away from the Impala and knew she would be on his heels.

When he got inside, he went straight to the desk. There was a man fumbling with a piece of paper and asking for directions to the cardiac unit.

Dean shifted from foot to foot, willing the man to get out of his way, but he seemed to be having trouble understanding the directions he was being given. When he could bear it no longer, he stepped around the man and leaned over the counter.

“Sam Winchester,” he said curtly. “He was in a fire. Where is he?”

“I will be with you in a moment,” the matronly woman said. “Let me just help this gentleman first.”

Dean’s fists clenched and he was forming an angry retort when someone grabbed his arm and tugged him back. He turned, breathing hard and preparing to face off with whoever was planning to interfere with him, and saw his mother standing behind him, her eyes tight with tension.

“Bobby called. He’s on the fourth floor, ICU.”

Dean’s heart hitched up its pace even higher. ICU meant it was really bad. Sam was really hurt. Was it burns? They could be serious. Or smoke inhalation. Both could be life-threatening.

Mary pulled him away and Dean kept up with her fast pace to the elevators. He slammed a finger against the button to summon a car and watched as the lit number above the door crept down from floor five to four.

“Breathe, Dean,” Mary reminded him.

Dean hadn’t even realized he was holding his breath. He forced himself to unlock his lungs and draw in a breath, feeling the fog in his mind clearing slightly.

The car arrived and they both rushed inside. Dean hit the button for the fourth floor and Mary mashed her fingers down on the button to close the doors.

The man that had been at the desk was making slow progress towards them, leaning heavily on his cane and calling to them to hold the elevator, but the doors slid closed before he could reach them, and Mary called an apology to him. There was more than one elevator, and the man would get where to he was heading soon. 

Mary took Dean’s hand from where it was thrumming against his leg, and Dean squeezed her fingers, feeling her trembling. He had never seen her like this before. She was fearless when hunting, only showing stress when he or Sam were in trouble, and that was rarer now that Sam had stopped hunting and Dean had become experienced in the field. Now she was scared, and that made it even harder for him to be strong, though he knew he needed to be for her the way she always had been for him.

“He’s going to be okay, Mom,” he said quickly. “He’s strong.”

She nodded, seeming comforted. “I know.”

Dean wished there were words he could use to comfort himself. The facts were working against it. Sam was in ICU, possibly fighting for his life, and even when they reached him, there would be nothing they could do but be with him. It was doctors and medicine that were going to save him, which meant Dean had to put his trust in people that weren’t family to save his brother. He’d never been good at trusting other people to do things for him, especially not for something as important as this.

The car came to a stop and Mary tugged Dean’s hand as she slipped through the half open doors. Dean rushed out with her and stopped and followed her gaze to a sign on the wall where directions were displayed.

“Though here,” Mary said, turning right. She reached for the door with their linked hands and then seemed to realize she was still clinging to him. She gave him a small forced smile before releasing her grip on his hand and swinging open the door.

They stepped through and immediately the knot in Dean’s chest tightened. It was much quieter here than in the lobby where he’d been waiting for directions, and the atmosphere was oppressive in its tension. Even without looking through the windows set into the walls revealing people surrounded by machinery, it was clear that this was a place for the seriously ill.

They rushed down the hall to a large desk where two people in pale blue scrubs were occupied with paperwork and a third was on the phone.

“Sam Winchester,” Mary said loudly. “He was in a fire.”

A man looked up from the chart he was completing and frowned. “If you could keep your voice down.”

Dean’s voice rose with his anger. “Tell us where he is!”

“Sir, if you cannot remain calm I will have to ask for you to be removed. This is intensive care. Our patients need peace to heal.”

Dean’s hand banged down on the counter; he was on the point of shouting, all sense and caution leaving him now that he was so close to Sam but being blocked from seeing him. Mary placed her hand on his and gripped it hard. She was still shaking and that acted like a bucket of cold water over Dean, taking his anger and replacing it with the determined calm persona he’d perfected hunting.

“Please,” Mary said. “We just need to see him.”

“Mary, Dean, thank god.”

They both spun around and saw Bobby approaching quickly along the hall behind them. He looked awful. His eyes were shadowed, and his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. His clothes looked as though they’d been slept in and the hair creeping below his cap needed shampooing.

“Bobby!” Mary said, rushing towards him. “Where is he?”

Neither Mary nor Dean replied as they rushed after him, coming to a door that Bobby opened and passed through. Mary pursued him, and Dean took a deep breath in an attempt to prepare himself before following.

It was loud inside, with beeps and a whoosh and clicking sound filling Dean’s ears before he forced himself to look up from the floor and see Sam. He froze and gripped the doorway for support.

There was a plastic brace around Sam’s neck and a mask over his face that held a tube that led into his mouth—and, Dean knew, down his throat—which was connected to a white machine beside the bed that made the whoosh-click sound. The beeps came from the heart monitors and a machine attached to an IV pole, which linked to a tube in the back of Sam’s right hand. There was a grey oximeter clamped to his finger and electrodes on his chest. A blood pressure cuff wrapped around his left arm, and his right forearm bore a white dressing.

He was covered to the waist with a thin sheet and his skin was flushed. There were blue plastic bags filled with liquid positioned around Sam’s bare flesh that Dean knew were cool packs. He and Mary had used them on many hunting injuries.

Mary was pale, and she swallowed reflexively as if fighting nausea. Dean felt the same way; his feeling of horror was making him sick.

Mary staggered toward the bed and stroked Sam’s hair back from his face with a hand that trembled, and then bent and kissed high on his cheek where the mask didn’t cover the skin. “Hello, love,” she said gently.

Dean tried to take a step toward the bed, but his legs felt weak. Bobby came to him and gripped his elbow. “Come sit down,” he said.

Dean took the offered support and stumbled forward to the left of the bed and collapsed on the chair Bobby had pushed close. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and said, “Hey, Sammy.” He reached out to his brother and then pulled his hand back, unable to make contact.

“You can touch him,” Bobby said. “You won’t hurt him.”

Dean forced himself to take Sam’s hand, feeling the heat of his feverish skin and the tremor that he now noticed was present in his whole body.

Though he could feel the heat of Sam’s skin, he was shaking as if he was freezing. “Is he cold?” he asked.

Bobby pushed a chair under Mary and she perched on the edge, her eyes fixed on Sam’s face and her fingers stroking his upper arm.

“It’s the fever,” Bobby said. “He’s not cold really. They talked about giving him paralytics to protect his spine, but they’re worried there will be side effects for his chest.

“Is his…” Mary trailed off and wiped at her eyes that were tearing. “His spine?”

“It’s not broken,” Bobby said. “He’s got reflexes in his legs and feet, but they’re not sure what else is going on there. He took a fall. He had a concussion, too, but they think that’s healed.”

“How did he fall?” Mary asked. “I thought it was a fire.”

“Something in the building exploded and he was thrown down the stairs. He’s not been conscious since then.”

“Why didn’t you tell us it was this bad?” Dean asked, his forehead pinched tight over his brows. 

“How would it have helped? You were already driving hell for leather and worrying. Knowing more would have just made the drive harder on you.”

“We should have known,” Dean growled.

Bobby raised his hands at his sides. “I did what I thought was right, what Sam would have wanted me to do.”

“What makes you think you’d know what he’d want?” Dean asked, his voice rising.

Bobby started to retort, a bite of anger in his tone, but Mary spoke over him. “Stop, both of you. It’s not helping anything, and Sam doesn’t need to hear it.”

Dean looked at her, seeing the tears that had wet her cheeks and the way her lips were pressed into a tight line as if she was holding back a cry. “Can he hear us?” he asked.

Though the question had been addressed to her, Bobby was the one that answered with an apologetic look to Mary. “The doctor said he probably can. He’s not deeply unconscious; he can feel pain.”

“He’s in pain?” Dean asked, suddenly feeling very young. 

Bobby considered before answering. “He _shouldn’t_ be right now. They’ve got him medicated, but when they test his pressure points, he reacts. That’s a good thing,” he added for Dean’s benefit as Mary seemed to be lost in Sam. Dean guessed she already knew all this from her many years of hunting and first aid knowledge. 

Dean nodded and set Sam’s hand back down, hating the feeling of his overheated skin.

“What exactly happened?” Mary asked, looking up from Sam at last.

“I just know what the kid that came in with Sam told the doctors,” Bobby said. “There was a fire and he dragged Sam out. When the place exploded, Sam was thrown over the rail and down the stairs. I got the call Monday and took the first flight out. I got here that afternoon.”

Dean did a quick calculation. “He’s been like this for four days?”

“No, he was worse before,” Bobby said. “It was touch and go for a while with the smoke and head injury. They’re not worried about his head anymore, but it’s his chest now. He’s got pneumonia.”

Mary gently placed her hand on Sam’s chest, as if she could heal him with her touch, and then stroked his cheek. “He’ll be okay,” she whispered, more to herself than to them, Dean thought.

The door opened, and Dean and Bobby looked around to see a man in blue scrubs and a white coat enter.

Bobby looked relieved. “Hey, Doc.”

The doctor smiled slightly. “Mr. Singer. I understand the rest of Sam’s family have arrived.”

Bobby nodded. “This is Sam’s mother, Mary Winchester, and his brother, Dean. This is Doctor Kempner. He’s one of the doctors that have been taking care of Sam.”

Mary seemed to drag her eyes from Sam again to look at the doctor. “How is he?”

The doctor approached the end of the bed and picked up a folder that he flipped open and turned a page of as he read down the notes then said, after a long pause, “He’s stable.”

Dean gaped at him. Was that all he was going to say? Sam was obviously seriously ill, fighting for his life even, and they were supposed to be comforted by the fact he was stable while doing it? Dean supposed he should be grateful the news wasn’t worse, but he was poised on the edge of outright despair and he needed something to really hold on to.

The doctor seemed to realize he needed to give them more than that, and he set the chart back in its place and said, “Sam suffered a fall and smoke inhalation, along with the burn to his arm. The burn is only partial thickness, so it hasn’t reached muscle or deep tissue, and while it will scar, it’s healing well. We treated the smoke inhalation with oxygen therapy at first, but the damage to his lungs caused respiratory arrest so we introduced mechanical support.”

Mary shuddered, and Bobby placed a hand on her shoulder as the doctor went on.

“He _is_ triggering the vent on occasion—trying to breath for himself out of rhythm with the machine—but it’s not enough yet that we feel safe removing him from the ventilator. The head injury we were concerned about has shown no signs of damage upon the immediate and following diagnostic head MRI’s. We haven’t been able to do an MRI of his back, as he deteriorated at the point we were going to take him to radiology. Though it is possible to do an MRI while on mechanical ventilation with the right equipment, we have decided against it for now as he’s showing no indication that the injury is serious. His reflexes to stimuli are good, but we are keeping the neck brace on him as a precaution. When he regains consciousness, we’ll do scans if they’re indicated; he may be able to tell us enough to know that it’s not needed.”

Mary looked into his eyes as if searching for something. “He is going to wake up then?” 

Dean hated that she even needed to ask. Sam _had to_ wake up.

“There are never guarantees,” Doctor Kempner said. “But I am hopeful. As I said, his head injury isn’t serious, which is lucky given the height of the fall. I believe he is unconscious now as a result of the damage to his lungs caused by the smoke and the complication of pneumonia. His body is trying to deal with the stress by shutting down. We’re treating him proactively, though. He is being given two broad-spectrum antibiotics intravenously and oxygen through the ventilator.”

Dean knew he was careful not to make them promises that he might not be able to keep, but he wished the doctor could give them more than just his assertions of hope. Perhaps he understood what they needed, as he went on in a more positive tone. 

“Sam has improved already. He was deeply unconscious when he was admitted, but now his GSC is five. His blood pressure and pulse are good. He’s fighting this, trying to breathe alone and wake up. When we’re confident he can maintain his own respiration unaided, we’ll remove the ventilator, as that can add its own complications to pneumonia.” He looked from Mary’s scared face to Dean’s. “I know it looks scary here with the equipment, and he _is_ seriously ill, but he’s strong and fighting back.”

“He would,” Bobby said quietly. “Kid’s too damn stubborn to do anything else.”

Dean’s lips quirked into a smile. Sam was stubborn, and that had made growing up with him hard sometimes, but he was grateful for it now as it aided Sam’s fight to recover.

The doctor approached Mary’s side of the bed and checked a readout on the machine. “We need to adjust Sam’s medication and attend to some of his personal needs. You will need to leave for a while. There is a room you can use while you wait. We’ll tell you when you can come back in.”

“Sure, okay,” Bobby said, standing without showing the concern and reluctance Dean felt.

Dean didn’t want to leave already, he wanted more time with his brother, but Mary was getting to her feet and following Bobby to the door. She glanced back when she realized Dean wasn’t with them and smiled sadly with understanding.

“Come on, Dean,” she said encouragingly.

“It won’t be for long,” Bobby said confidently. He was obviously used to the routine from the days he had spent here with Sam alone.

Dean forced himself to his feet and patted Sam’s hand. “We’ll be right back,” he said, and then turned and walked past his mother and Bobby out of the room.

Bobby led them to a door at the other end of the hall and pushed it open, leading them into a small room with a comfortable looking couch and chairs across from a table with a coffee pot and paper cups. On the middle of the coffee table was a strategically placed box of Kleenex that made Dean think this was the place where bad news was usually given. He picked up the box and threw it into the corner, ignoring Bobby and Mary’s surprised looks and soft-spoken words.

He dropped down onto the couch, and Mary sat down beside him and took his hand. He allowed her to link her fingers through his. He was sure the comfort was being taken as well as offered, and that made the touch bearable, even though he felt like his nerves were raw and exposed, just as he had since he’d walked away from Sam’s bedside.

Bobby poured two cups of coffee, doctored one with a pot of creamer and packet of sugar the way Mary liked, and then put them down on the table in front of them. Neither Winchester reached for a cup, though the caffeine would surely be as welcome to Mary as it would be to Dean after their nights of restless sleep in the tent and the long drive.

Mary cleared her throat and her hand twitched in Dean’s as she said, “Bobby, what about Jess?”

Bobby bowed his head. “She didn’t make it out of the fire.”

Dean fingers clenched for a moment before he heard Mary’s gasp and realized he was crushing her hand. He pulled free and apologized quietly.

He was horrified. Jessica was dead. He’d only met her a few times, though he’d spoken to her on the phone between times when he’d called Sam and she’d answered. She was a sweet girl that had obviously adored Sam, which had endeared her to them straight away. Sam had loved her, too. She had been good, kind and smart, and she was gone. Dean felt a lump form in his throat. 

“I thought she had to be,” Mary said, wiping away the tears that had started to fall again. “I heard the voicemail, but…” She sucked in a jerky breath. “This is going to destroy him.”

Bobby nodded. “Her parents have come in every day to see Sam. They’re…” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t even have words to tell you what a mess they are. They come and ask about Sam, and they obviously care about him, but I feel so damn relieved when they’re gone.”

Dean frowned. Bobby knew grief; he had felt his own and he’d been in the hunting life a long time so he’d seen other peoples’ sufferings. He’d never seemed unable to face anything before.

“Is it that bad?” he asked, unsure whether he wanted to hear the answer.

“It’s probably worse than you’re imagining,” Bobby said. “You can feel their pain just being close to them. But that’s not the worst thing. When I see them and how they’re hurting, I can’t help but be glad it’s them and not me. That fire could have killed Sam just as easily as it did Jess, and I am so damn grateful it was her not him. Looking into their eyes when you’re thinking that, knowing they know it, too, makes you feel like a monster.”

Dean understood what Bobby was saying as he felt the same way. He was devastated that Jessica was dead, and not just because of what it meant for Sam, but he was also guiltily grateful that it _had_ been her and not Sam. If it had to cost one life, he knew which he needed it to be.

Mary sniffed and said, “We all feel it, Bobby. They would feel it too if it had ended the other way around. It’s human. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Sam has to be our only concern. When he wakes up, he’s coming back to a world where he’s lost the person he loves. We know how that feels. He’s going to need us strong, not twisted with guilt for something we can’t do anything about.”

Bobby nodded and cleared his throat gruffly. “I know. You’re right.”

Dean picked up his coffee and took a sip for something to do. He held the cup with both hands in an attempt to stop their shaking. He had been scared since they’d got out of the forest and Mary had gotten that voicemail, terrified even, and he’d thought there was no room to feel more, but now he did. He realized that, even if they were lucky enough to get the best outcome of this whole nightmare, for Sam to wake up and recover physically, there would still be hell for Sam to pay mentally. After the trauma he’d gone through, the guilt he was surely going to feel as the survivor of the fire that had killed the woman he loved, his grief…he was going to be wrecked.

Dean had never loved anyone the same way Sam loved Jess, but he loved his family. Mary, Sam and Bobby were the most important people in his world. He didn’t know how he would be able to live without them, but that was what they were expecting Sam to be able to do. They didn’t just need him to be physically strong to come out of this. He had to face a different hell and live, too.

It would be better for Sam to sleep as long as he could, to be spared that pain, but Dean was counting on him to be awake and with them again soon, even knowing what it would mean for him.

He felt like a monster, too.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Chapter Four_ **

When they were allowed back into Sam’s room, Mary and Dean took up places on either side of the bed while Bobby pulled up a seat beside Mary.

It felt better for Mary to be back close to Sam, as if their presence could help him, though it was difficult for her to see him like this. Her strong, virile son had been reduced to this hospital bed and these machines to live.

The last time she’d seen him, before he went back to college after summer break, he’d kissed her goodbye at the airport and told her he’d see her for Christmas. He’d been happy, eager to get back to Jessica and his life in California, filled with a mixture of nerves and excitement for his senior year and the challenges it presented, like the LSAT and law school applications. He’d been positive about his life, and Mary had said goodbye with a smile.

Almost as soon as he’d disappeared from sight, Mary’s thoughts had turned to the next case she and Dean had lined up—a private hire by the family of a murdered man from Texas. Mary had believed it was a human death, and she’d been thinking of how quickly they could tie it up and move onto something supernatural. As much as she enjoyed all aspects of her job and knew the necessity of the civilian cases to support and maintain their other work, she preferred the supernatural cases where she felt they were making a real difference.

She felt she could make no real difference now, though. All she could do was be there for her son, talking to him and supporting him when he woke—and he would—helping him through his terrible loss.

She was murmuring to Sam now, leaning close so that the conversation felt more private, reassuring him that she was there, that she loved him, and that everything was going to be okay. Though, she knew that reassurance was only partially true. Nothing she could do would make up for Jessica’s death; she knew that from personal experience.

If she’d not had Sam and Dean after John’s death, she wouldn’t have been able to function at all under her overpowering grief. It was only the fact that they’d needed her that had given her something to keep going for. Dean had been in his own world of confusion and grief, not understanding why his father had suddenly disappeared from his life, and Sam had been as dependant on her as a baby can be, fussing even more because the one that had always been the best at settling him, John, was gone.

Sam had been a happy baby most of the time, but when he was tired or suffering from the colic that had been the bane of those early months, it was John’s arms that he had settled in, John’s voice that had soothed him. Dean had been the opposite as a baby. He’d been Mary’s, always seeking her embrace and voice. After John’s death, Mary had to take the place of both parents for both her boys, and that had focused her on something other than grief—that and the need to protect them.

She was stroking Sam’s hair back from his face, trying not to feel the heat of his fevered skin as that made it hard for her to stay calm for him, when Bobby yawned widely and drew her attention.

She looked him over properly for the first time since they’d arrived at the hospital, and she saw that he looked terrible. He had shadows of exhaustion under his eyes and he sat heavy in his chair, as if he didn’t have the energy to hold himself upright. The lines of his forehead were deep with worry. As she looked at him, she realized, as bad as this was for her now, Bobby had been living it even longer. He’d spent days with Sam, the man he loved like a son, seeing him so ill, and he’d not been able to bring him the rest of his family. It must have been torture.

“You should get some rest, Bobby,” she said gently. “You look exhausted. When did you last sleep or eat?”

“I’ve been eating in the cafeteria here,” he said, stifling another yawn. “Only when I had to leave the room,” he added, as if expecting a rebuke. “I clean up in the bathroom, and I’ve been catching sleep in here and that family room they let us use. I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Dean said. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks,” Bobby said with forced humor.

“Get a motel for the night,” Mary said. “Sleep in a real bed for a change. Shower. Eat. I’ll stay with Sam.”

“ _We_ will stay with Sam,” Dean corrected.

“You should get some rest, too,” Mary said.

Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not going anywhere until he’s awake and can tell me to leave himself.”

“We don’t know when that will be,” Bobby said.

Dean’s expression became mutinous. “It’s going to be soon.”

“We all hope that…” Bobby started, but Dean cut him off.

“I _know_ it. He’s waking up soon.” He touched Sam’s arm. “He’s already cooling down.”

Bobby looked up at the monitor beside the bed that displayed Sam’s temperature and frowned. Mary didn’t look up to check what it was; she knew from Bobby’s face alone that it hadn’t come down.

Dean fixed his attention on Sam again, making the movement a curt denial of what he had surely seen as clearly as Mary.

“Please, Bobby,” Mary said. “You need to take care of yourself.”

“I’ll go soon,” Bobby said. “But there’s something we need to talk about first.”

Dean scowled at Bobby. “What are you hiding from us now?”

Mary knew he was still upset Bobby hadn’t told them Sam’s full condition on the phone, but, in a way, she was glad he hadn’t. The drive had been hard enough, and if he’d know just how bad Sam was, Dean would have been even more reckless on the road. She had barely kept up with him as it was. Even though she had left Culver City before him, Dean had caught up and pulled ahead quickly, pushing the Impala to its limits. Mary’s Jeep had a powerful engine, even better than its manufactured abilities as Bobby had tinkered under the hood, but she’d had trouble keeping pace.

She had been just as scared as Dean for Sam, but she was better at controlling it. Dean had inherited his grandfather’s fiery nature. Mary had once had it, too, but she’d perfected restraint over her years of hunting.

“I’m not hiding anything,” Bobby said calmly. “I’ve told you everything, but I think you missed some of it. I got the call when they found my number in Sam’s wallet early Monday, hours after Sam was brought in. The fire happened Sunday evening.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “Yeah… And?”

Mary was confused, too, and then she realized what Bobby was telling them. They’d left the Jeep and started their hike into the forest on Saturday afternoon, and they’d spent the next evening, Sunday, sharing stories of John and a beer apiece. That had been the anniversary, which meant the fire had happened the night they’d spent remembering John’s life.

She gasped. “It was the same day.”

“The same day as what?” Dean asked, and then Mary saw understanding dawn in his eyes. “November 2nd?”

Bobby nodded. “I’m not saying it was _him._ It could have been anything: a forgotten candle, a fryer fire. The building was old—it could have been an electrical fault. Sam was complaining about the furnace when he was home over the summer; that could have gone up.”

“Or it could have been the demon,” Mary whispered.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Bobby said seriously.

“Why would it come back?” Dean asked. “It’s been years.”

“Twenty-two years,” Bobby agreed. “To the day, it was exact. And that’s the part that makes me wonder, since we don’t know why it came the first time, do we?”

Dean shook his head and Mary forced herself to do the same, showing no sign of her nerves or guilt.

She had never told another person about her deal. Bobby, Sam and Dean believed she had seen something that night that told her it had been the demon she had once tracked with her parents. John hadn’t remembered his neck being snapped. He’d just woken up and seen Samuel lying dead with them. They had been consumed with funeral arrangements in the immediate aftermath of that night. John had shielded her by never trying to discuss it again. Mary had borne her guilt and fear alone.

She’d spent 1983 waiting for the demon to come, always aware of the risk, but the night he had come, she’d failed to protect the man she loved. John had interrupted. John had died. And Mary had always known in her heart that it wasn’t just her fault because she made the deal; she should have been the one in Sam’s nursery that night, too. It was her fault he had come. She should have paid the price, not John.

Why would the demon come back now? Sam couldn’t have made a deal, too, could he? Though she had never known why the demon had come into her home the first time, why he had made that deal for house entry ten years before, she had thought it was over when he came in and killed John.

Sam would only have been twelve years old ten years ago, with nothing to offer a demon. And he’d known about the supernatural world that lived on the fringes back then. He wouldn’t have been tricked into making a deal; he was too smart for that, too careful. He was always the most cautious of her sons. He was the one that had been most scared.

When Dean learned the truth about the world of the supernatural and hunting, it had been like a puzzle piece clicking into place for him. He had finally known why Mary and Bobby sometimes came home injured and the reason for all the strange books in the house and the places forbidden to him and Sam where they stored their weapons.

Sam, so much younger, had been more scared than anything. It had taken him time to learn that, while sometimes they came home hurt, Mary and Bobby were always better than the monsters they faced; they always won.

“What do we do if it is back?” Dean asked. 

“We find a way to kill it,” Mary said.

“How?” Dean asked. “It’s a demon.”

“There’s something that might work,” Mary said. “A gun.”

Bobby grimaced. “The gun we don’t know really exists.”

There was no proof that the stories of the colt were true. It had been a tale told to Mary by her father who didn’t even believe in it, but she had to hope it was real. If it wasn’t, there was nothing she could do to the demon but exorcise him, and that wouldn’t last long enough. If it was back now and if she was right about why it disappeared before, the longest it would last was twenty-two years.

“What gun?” Dean asked.

“Not now,” she said. “We don’t know if he’s really back yet. We need to concentrate on Sam. When he wakes up, he can tell us what happened. Bobby could be right; it could have been a natural fire. I think it was. The date was just a coincidence.”

“Do you really believe that?” Dean asked.

“I do,” Mary said, holding back her doubt to keep her voice steady.

She wanted to believe it. If it had been the demon, it meant it was her fault again. If her deal had somehow brought the demon back, she had cost Jessica her life and put Sam in this hospital bed, fighting for his life. If it was natural, there was only one death she was culpable for: John’s. She _needed_ to believe it.

As much as she would like the colt to be real, for her to find it and put a bullet between the demon’s eyes, to have her revenge, she didn’t want to risk the people she loved. She had never heard of anything as dangerous as the demon, and she didn’t want her sons anywhere near that kind of power. She had spent the years since John’s death doing everything she could to never put them on a demon’s radar again.

She turned back to Sam and stroked his cheek. He would wake up and tell them the story of an unattended candle, a faulty furnace, anything but a story that would tear their world apart again.

She had to hope.


	5. Chapter 5

**_Chapter Five_ **

In the three days that followed their arrival at the hospital, Dean’s conviction that Sam was going to wake up soon was tested.

Though there were improvements, like Sam’s fever breaking and the fact he was trying to breathe alone more frequently since his chest began to clear, he remained unconscious and no amount of pleading from Dean on the rare occasions they were left alone in the room together seemed to reach him. He didn’t even twitch a finger. 

They fell into a pattern. Mary, Dean and Bobby would leave the room for meals in turns, and once a day they would go back to the motel Bobby had booked for them to shower and change clothes. Only Bobby ever stayed at the motel to sleep, and that was under Mary’s insistence. She and Dean slept in shifts in the side room off the ICU while the other stayed with Sam so that he was never left alone.

Dean preferred when he could stay at the hospital, as he had sworn he wouldn’t leave until Sam was awake to tell him to go, but Mary became more stressed when he refused to leave at all, and he wanted to spare her more worry. She was already at her limit with what was happening to Sam; she didn’t need to worry about him, too. 

Dean was driving back to the hospital from the motel, having taken his turn to clean up and change in the double room Bobby had booked for him and Sam to share when Sam got out of the hospital. Dean liked that he’d gotten them a double. It was fierce proof of what they all knew—sooner or later, Sam was going to be out of that hospital bed and with them properly again.

He pulled into a spot in the hospital parking lot and climbed out. He walked at a brisk pace into the hospital and hesitated for a moment when he saw the people congregated at the coffee cart. He had intended to get them all a drink before going up again, but the queue was long, and it was going to delay him longer than he was willing. He thought he would check on Sam and then come back down later.

He strode to the elevators and stepped into a car with a couple and what looked like their young daughter. She was dancing near the button panel, reaching up to press the buttons and having her hand caught and pushed down by her father.

Dean remembered Sam like that: when he had been enchanted by such simple things as a ride in an elevator or picking his own bottle of soda from the fridge in The Roadhouse. He’d been a happy kid, though Dean had always felt a sense of superiority in the things he was able to do sooner than him. Sam had sulked the first time Bobby let Dean light the candles for the ritual to seal a curse box, though neither of them had really known what they were doing it for then as it was before they learned the truth. Bobby had handed him the matchbook and told him to go ahead. Dean had felt like an adult that day, and he’d been perhaps a little too confident as he’d dropped the match and set fire to some papers on Bobby’s desk. The fire had quickly been extinguished, but the burn mark was still there in the varnished wood, a reminder of what had done.

Sam had stopped brooding quickly when it happened, once his fear of the fire had passed, and he’d tried to console Dean—who was feeling stupid. Dean hadn’t been able to accept it though, and he’d snapped at Sam.

That and a hundred other moments of normal childhood disagreements and insults seemed to matter more to Dean now that he knew how easily he could lose his brother. He made a mental vow to be the brother Sam deserved in the future. He’d show him how much he cared—and he did, he loved Sam—instead of brushing off the ‘chick flick moments’ when Sam would allow his sensitivity to show.

Dean stepped out on the fourth floor and made straight for the ICU and Sam’s room. When he got into the room, he saw Mary sitting in her usual place at Sam’s bedside, her eyes fixed on his face and her hand stroking back his hair from his brow. She looked up at him as he entered and took his seat on the other side of the bed, saying a soft greeting to him, and then returned her attention to her youngest son.

Bobby was pacing back and forth in front of the window, his phone pressed to his ear. “I can’t do it, Jim,” he said. “We’ve got something else going on. We’re in California right now.” He listened for a moment. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. I’ll call you if it is. Yeah, okay, bye.” He snapped his phone closed and said, “Jim’s got a case he’s looking for someone for. Maybe a vampire in Colorado.”

“Why doesn’t he get Daniel Elkins on it?” Dean asked. “He’s closer, and vampires are his speciality.”

“He tried, but Daniel already has a nest in Washington to deal with. He said he’ll try Bill Harvelle.”

Dean nodded. Bill was a damn good hunter, and Dean knew he was more than capable of taking care of it.

Bill and Jim had been the staples of his life for almost as long as he could remember. They were just friends of Mary’s when he was young, people they visited occasionally, but when he’d discovered the truth about the world and the monsters that resided in it, he’d learned they were heroes like his mom and Bobby. Jim was more of a lore man than a hunter, finding and distributing cases among hunters and providing them with weapons, but Dean had taken a couple actual hunts with him and he was good; good enough to make Dean wonder why he didn’t do more in the active hunts. It wasn’t a matter of fear, Dean was sure.

Sam and Dean spent holidays at Jim’s growing up when Mary and Bobby needed to take a case together, and those memories were ones of pleasure. Sam especially liked going to the house behind the church where Jim preached, playing in Jim’s garden and helping the parishioner that tended to the lawns and flowers there, even sitting at the back of the church for Jim’s services. Dean had no real attachment to the church itself, God wasn’t for him, but he’d always enjoyed seeing Jim.

He’d preferred The Roadhouse to the church, with its wealth of other hunters to observe and sometimes talk to. Even before he and Sam had learned the truth, the men and women that sharpened their knives and field stripped weapons at the tables while drinking the beers poured by Ellen had a kind of dark glamour to him. Sam and Jo, much younger, had been less impressed. It was only when Jo hit her late teens that she’d become interested in the hunting life, and Dean was already hunting by then. He’d been one of the glamourous to her, and he’d enjoyed the sensation of her awestruck eyes fixed on him and the way she’d listened attentively to his stories.

Dean knew Jo wanted to hunt too, but Ellen and Bill wouldn’t allow her to make the choice to commit until she’d finished college. It was a similar kind of deal to the one Mary had offered Dean and Sam when they turned fifteen. Before that, they’d been limited to helping with lore and studying some of the journals Bobby had inherited from dead hunters. They couldn’t really commit until they’d finished school. 

The rhythm of the ventilator stalled again, snapping Dean’s focus back to the present as Sam’s chest moved unevenly for a space of ten breathes before falling into the mechanical rhythm again.

“He’s doing it again,” Bobby said with satisfaction.

Mary smiled and touched her palm to Sam’s cheek. “He’s trying.”

The first time Dean had noticed the change in Sam’s breathing, it had scared him, sure that it was a sign of decline in his brother’s condition, but he knew now that it was improvement instead. When it happened Sam was taking breaths alone, interrupting the machine that sensed the action and stopped to give him the chance to do it himself. Each time it happened now, he was pleased, as it meant Sam was taking up the strain himself.

“Think we should tell someone?” Dean asked hopefully.

The doctor had been talking about taking Sam off of the ventilator for a day now, and Dean wanted it to happen. Sam would seem like he was really coming back without that tube down his throat, and Dean knew his brother well enough to know he would want it out. He had faith in Sam to handle it. 

“Worth a shot,” Bobby said, tucking his phone into his pocket and crossing the room to the door.

As the door clicked closed behind him, Mary said, her tone encouraging, “Keep that going, Sam, and you’ll be free of it sooner.” She stroked his cheek. “You’re doing so well.”

As if Sam had heard her—and Dean supposed it was probable he had—the machine stalled again, and Sam’s chest moved in a different rhythm.

“Nice work, Sammy,” Dean said approvingly, his eyes crinkling with his wide smile.

The door opened, and Bobby was followed in by Doctor Kempner and one of the nurses Dean hadn’t learned the name of yet. She was in her thirties, with short hair, and Dean thought she looked kind. If Sam was going to do this, take this on himself, he wanted someone like her there with him for it.

The doctor approached the bed and Dean got up and moved away so he had clear access to the machines. “I hear Sam’s triggering the vent again,” he said.

“He’s been doing it off and on for a while all morning, but he’s doing it more now,” Mary said.

The nurse handed the doctor the chart from the end of the bed and he examined it, turning pages before looking up at the machine. “I think he’s ready to wean,” he said.

“You’re taking him off?” Mary asked, her eyes bright.

“We’re going to try. If you would give us a little space. We will slow the ventilator and see if Sam sustains his sats himself. If he can do that, we will extubate and start oxygen support through other means. There may be a pause before Sam’s body reacts, and that can be frightening, but we’re here and will resume the flow at the first sign of trouble.”

Mary nodded, then stood and bent over the bed to kiss Sam’s cheek before moving back to stand by the window with Dean and Bobby.

Doctor Kempner checked Sam’s chest with a stethoscope before nodding and addressing the nurse. “Watch him carefully for signs of distress, Sally. I’m going to decrease flow.”

“Yes, doctor,” she said professionally and fixed her eyes on the monitor beside the bed.

He pressed a button on the machine and the noise that had become almost constant in the room, the whoosh and click of each breath, slowed. Dean watched Sam’s chest nervously, but before even three of Dean’s quick breaths, it rose and fell again. Mary’s hand found Dean’s and her fingers curled around his. Dean gave it a reassuring squeeze and she drew a shaky breath of her own.

“Coming down again,” Doctor Kempner said, pressing a button. “How is his ox sats?”

“Eighty-five,” Sally said.

The doctor nodded slowly.

“Is that okay?” Dean asked.

“It’s lower than we would like, but with the weakness from pneumonia it’s to be expected. We’ll use supplemental oxygen if he needs it.” 

He pressed another button, and the machine stopped completely. Dean held his breath, and Mary’s fingers clenched around his to the point of pain, but Sam’s chest rose and fell evenly still, and the doctor turned to smile at them.

“He’s doing it.”

Mary made a gasping sound and Bobby put his arm around her.

Dean understood her relief. Sam was handling it, and that was a huge achievement for him after everything he’d been through.

The doctor smiled and said, “We’ll extubate now. If you would like to clear the room for a moment, we can attend to his other needs, too.”

Mary nodded, and Bobby dropped his arm from her shoulders. Still clinging to Dean’s hand, Mary walked to the bed to touch Sam’s cheek, towing Dean with her, and then to the door. She didn’t release him until they were outside the room, and then it was to rake her hands over her face, rubbing at her wet eyes.

“This is good,” Dean said, confused by the show of sadness.

“I know,” she said, smiling at him while tears welled in her eyes. “I’m fine, Dean.”

Sally came to the window and smiled apologetically before pulling the cord to close the blinds, blocking their view of Sam. Dean was guiltily relieved, as he had a feeling that they’d been asked to leave the room for more than the need to attend to Sam’s needs. He thought what was about to happen was going to be unpleasant for them to witness in someone they loved. 

“Shall I get us a coffee?” Bobby asked.

“Yes,” Mary said eagerly. “Please.”

“I’ll go down to the cart,” Bobby said. “Come on, Dean. You can help me carry them.”

Confused by the fact Bobby wanted help when he’d managed alone every other time by using a cup holder, Dean checked his mother’s expression, saw her nod, and then followed him to the elevator.

They rode down in silence and joined the queue at the cart before Dean asked, “What was that about? Why do you need help all of a sudden?”

“I thought your mom could use a moment alone.”

Dean’s brows pinched together. “She said she was happy.”

“She did, and I think she meant it, but there’s a fine line between happy and a breakdown. She’s been as strong as she can so far, but she could use a little space for a while to get herself in order.”

“She’s handled it all though,” Dean said. “Why break now when he’s doing better?”

“She handled it because she had to. You were there. She needed to be strong for both of you, especially you since you were there seeing and feeling it all, too. I think she is really feeling it now, though: what happened to Sam and what we almost lost. She _needs_ to feel it, and she needs space for that. Your mom is one strong lady, but we all have a breaking point. She won’t want you to see her like that, Dean.”

Mary had been pretty incredible since they’d first arrived at the hospital, seeming to be staying strong while Dean was close to breaking, only letting her worry show on rare occasions such as when they were trying Sam off the ventilator. The idea she’d been maintaining that act for him made him feel guiltily relieved. He hadn’t been through something like this in his life before. When his father died, it was sudden and there was no lingering panic or worry about recovery as it was all over quickly, leaving them with grief to handle. This wasn’t the same, and they were grieving in a different kind of way—for Jessica’s death and for what Sam had lost, bearing the fear that they would lose Sam. He thought if he’d seen Mary breaking, it would have stolen the strength he had left.

The queue moved forward slowly until they were next in line and Bobby was appraising the snacks on offer. He took out his wallet as the barista looked up and him for their order.

“Three americanos, please,” Bobby said. 

Their coffees were made and served, and Bobby paid for them while Dean carried Mary’s over to the stand where the pots of creamer and sugar packets were. He doctored Mary’s then met Bobby at the elevator.

“You think she’s ready for us to go up?” Dean asked.

Bobby looked at the large clock on the wall and nodded. “If she’s not yet, she will be when we get there. When _you_ get there,” he corrected himself.

The rode up the elevator and through to the ICU. Mary was no longer in the hall, and Dean wondered if she’d taken some space or if she was back in with Sam. He saw the nurse, Sally, at the station and she smiled at them and said, “You can go back in. Sam’s doing well. If he stays stable for the next few hours, he’ll be moved to the step-down unit.”

Relieved and murmuring his thanks, Dean went back to Sam’s room and went inside, holding it open with a foot for Bobby to enter. He followed him inside and looked at Sam. He seemed infinitely better without the tube in his throat and the mask on his face that had been replaced with a nasal cannula, but his skin was still pale, standing out more starkly against the dark stubble on his face and jaw that had been partially concealed before.

The dressing on his arm was also gone now, revealing a patch of puckered red skin that ran from a little above Sam’s wrist to his elbow. Dean could see that it was going to be an ugly scar that Sam was probably going to bear for life, but if that was the worst physical side-effect of what Sam was going to have from the fire, it was a blessing.

He handed Mary her coffee and she thanked him before setting it down on the locker beside the bed, returning her gaze to Sam, only looking up again when Bobby cursed quietly.

“What?” Dean asked.

Bobby set down his coffee and said sadly, “Jessica’s parents are here.”

Dean looked to the window in the hall that Bobby was facing and saw two people standing in the hall, looking in.

Mary got quickly to her feet and walked to the door; she opened it and said, “Please, come in,” before stepping back and holding it for them.

Dean had never met Jessica’s parents before—though he knew Sam spent a lot of time with them as they lived in Sacramento and he and Jessica had made regular weekend trips to her home—but he had seen photographs of them in Sam and Jessica’s apartment. His first thought when they came in was that Bobby had to be wrong, that these couldn’t be Jessica’s parents; they looked far too old.

Upon closer inspection, he saw that Bobby was right; it was them, but they looked the furthest thing from the people that had smiled out of the photographs he’d seen. They appeared to have aged years. Their faces were pale and their eyes shadowed; their clothes seemed to hang too heavy on them. Jessica’s mother was twisting her hands in front of her, and her father looked as though he had been crying recently. 

“Michael, Elizabeth, this is Mary and Dean…” Bobby introduced.

“You’re his family,” Elizabeth said. “I can see. It’s nice to meet you at last. Sam and… Jess spoke of you often.”

As her voice caught on her daughter’s name, Michael’s eyes filled with tears that spilled down his cheeks when he blinked.

Elizabeth touched his arm gently, and he drew a breath to master himself. “We’re sorry to intrude,” he said. “We won’t stay long. I know they wouldn’t like so many of us in his room. We just wanted to check on Sam.”

“We’ve been coming every day to see his doctors,” his wife added. “They wouldn’t tell us much, of course, but we wanted to check in.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t see you,” Bobby said. “Things have been kinda…”

“We understand,” Elizabeth said, her eyes drifting to Sam and a sad smile playing on the corners of her lips. “Has he woken up yet?”

“Not yet,” Mary said. “He’s breathing on his own now though. We’re hoping he’ll be awake soon.”

“So are we,” Michael said fervently. “We’ve been so worried.”

There was no doubting the sincerity of the words. The way his eyes fixed on Sam and the fervour in them—just how Mary and Bobby looked at Sam and how Dean himself probably did—told their own story. They really cared. After everything they’d lost, it would be easy for them to resent Sam’s continued existence when Jessica had been lost, but there was no sign of it in either of them. Dean thought they were better people than him. He was aware just how lucky he was that Sam survived. If it had been the other way around, if Jessica was the one in the hospital bed and Sam gone, he knew he couldn’t have been so generous.

“He’s doing better,” Bobby reassured her. “His chest is clearing, too.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I’m glad. We’ve been waiting for him.”

Dean frowned as the strange words fell awkwardly from her lips, as if they’d been forced out over a silent sob. What did they want from Sam?

“We’ve not had the funeral yet,” Elizabeth explained, seeing Dean’s confusion.

“Jess loved Sam more than anything in the world, and we don’t want to say goodbye to her without him there,” Michael added. “He deserves to be there as much, if not more, than anyone else.”

Dean had seen a lot of grief in his life, through his mother after John had died and in survivors of hunts that had suffered their own losses. He’d always thought of grief as an insular thing that blinded people to what was happening around them, but both Michael and Elizabeth were thinking of Sam. They were either exceptional people, truly selfless, or they were clinging to Sam as the last piece of Jessica that remained. Dean wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing. Sam was going to be the one that needed the support when he woke up; he wouldn’t be able to bear the weight of someone else’s need.

Mary took Elizabeth’s hand and cupped it between her own. “Thank you. I know that will mean a lot to him.”

“He made Jess so happy,” Elizabeth said in a choked voice. “She knew what it meant to be in love thanks to him. It makes us grateful to…” She broke off with a sob and Mary wrapped her arms around her, rubbing her back and making soothing sounds as she sobbed into Mary’s shoulder.

“It matters,” Michael said, his forehead creased with sadness and tears gathering in his eyes again. “She was so young and there is so much she never did, but she did know love. He nodded. “And, yes, that makes us grateful.”

Elizabeth pulled back from Mary and wiped her hands over her face. “It’s not right,” she said fiercely. “We’re not supposed to be the ones to bury our children. She was supposed to have a life without us, not the other way around.”

Dean couldn’t imagine how it felt for them to have lost their daughter, the complete opposite of the natural order, and he didn’t know what to say to them. He let his eyes drift back to Sam and thought, perhaps cruelly, that it would be better if they hadn’t come as there was a chance Sam was hearing this, too. He had cared about Jessica’s parents, Dean knew, and now their pain was filling the room.

“We don’t even know what caused the fire,” Elizabeth went on. “They can’t find where it started. There is nothing for us to be angry at, nothing or no one to blame for it. Maybe if we knew, we could make sense of it.”

Dean absorbed her words, feeling Bobby’s eyes on him. If it had been the demon, there would be no known origin that they could detect; it was unnatural fire. It added credence to the theory that it had been him. As eager as he was to know if it really was, if the monster that had killed his father was back, he didn’t want Sam to have to tell them.

Elizabeth dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex and said, “We’ll leave you alone now.”

“You don’t need to go,” Mary said quickly, though Dean selfishly wished they would. He wanted their penetrating pain away from Sam.

“No, we should get home,” Michael said. “We have arrangements to make.” He took a card from his wallet and pressed it into Mary’s hand. “Please call us if there’s news, though, and tell Sam we’re thinking of him when he wakes up.”

“We will,” Mary promised. “And you call us if there’s anything we can do.” She patted her pockets and pulled out her wallet. She fumbled with it for a moment then pulled out one of the dark blue business cards she and Dean carried with their official details on. She handed it to Michael and said, “Anything at all.”

Michael thanked her, and Elizabeth gave her a brief hug before smiling wetly at Sam and following her husband out of the room.

Dean waited until the door closed behind them and then blew out a breath. “That was brutal,” he murmured. “Worse than I imagined, even after what you said, Bobby.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said, coming back to his chair beside the bed and patting Sam’s hand where it lay on the sheet. “And that’s better than it was before.”

“I can’t even imagine what they’re…” Mary shook her head. “I don’t want to. That could have been us.”

“But it wasn’t,” Bobby said. “We’re the lucky ones. We’ve got to hold onto that.”

Mary nodded and kissed Sam’s cheek before taking her seat beside the bed again. “We’re lucky,” she said quietly. 

Dean knew that they were; they could have lost Sam so easily, and he was getting better every day now. _They_ were lucky, but Sam wasn’t. He had come close to losing his life and survived, but he had lost the love of his life, and that was going to wreck him. Dean saw now, in Michael and Elizabeth’s pain, that seeing Sam lying in a hospital bed was bad, but there was worse to witness still to come.

He would have to see his brother’s grief.


	6. Chapter 6

The evening after Sam had been removed from the ventilator he was taken to a step-down unit, as his required care needs weren’t so intensive. A day after that, he was moved to a private room on a general ward where there was a sleeper chair for them to stay the night. Unlike in the ICU where their overnight stays were tolerated, it was encouraged in the new ward. They were all waiting for Sam to wake up imminently, and a familiar presence was known to help disoriented patients stay calm upon waking. They didn’t have to leave the room so often for Sam to be attended to either. It made for a more relaxed atmosphere for them all.

Mary had eventually been able to persuade Dean to go back to the motel to sleep since Sam had been moved, and she had her nights with him alone. She preferred it that way. She knew Dean felt the same need to be there that they all did, but when she was alone, she could let down her guard a little. She still hadn’t broken completely, though she knew she would at some point. Sometimes the tears came, and she let herself be weak when it was just her and Sam. 

Sam looked better. His fever was completely gone now, and his lungs were clearing by the day. The main concern now, other than the fact he was still unconscious, was any possible injury to his back, and they wouldn’t know if that was an issue until he was awake. They had considered doing an MRI while he was sleeping still, but the fact he was expected to wake any moment and none of them wanted him waking inside a scanner, alone, made them decide against it.

Now Mary’s immediate fears for his life were gone, her concern for his heart and mind were more pressing. She had been so occupied with what they were doing to save Sam’s life that what the world he woke up to would be like for him, without the woman he loved, hadn’t seemed as important to her. Now she knew his waking was approaching at any moment, she worried about how he was going to suffer when he found Jessica was gone.

Dean had been thinking about it, she knew. When they had gone to the cafeteria together for dinner the day before—leaving Bobby with Sam—he’d confided his fears to her, and she hadn’t known what to say to ease them for him. She had felt that kind of grief before so she knew what Sam was going to go through. She wouldn’t wish it on an enemy, let alone her own son.

Meeting Elizabeth and Michael hadn’t just made her see the depths of a parent’s grief that she had been spared, it also made her freshly see the suffering of love and loss. Sam was going to suffer so much.

But, despite that, she wanted him to wake up. She wanted her child to be released from the horrible, still, empty immobility. She was selfish, not cruel. She just loved her sons so much that she wanted them to be with her, even if it would be hard for them. Dean needed Sam awake for his own peace of mind, and she wanted him to have that; she wanted Sam to finally be able to see her and know she was there for him, that he wasn’t alone. 

Bobby had gone back out to get them something to eat, as they were all sick of cafeteria food, and Dean was dozing in the more comfortable sleeper chair. Mary was sitting at Sam’s bedside, holding his hand and speaking quietly to him so as not to wake Dean. She was talking about memories of him and the things she and Dean had been doing since they’d last seen him. She wanted it to be as normal for him as it could be if he was hearing her. 

She had lulled herself into a kind of trance with her words and the sound of Sam’s heart recorded on the monitor, but she noticed the moment it changed and her mind snapped back to full alertness.

Sam’s hand twitched in hers and his heart began to beat faster.

Dean, attuned to the sounds of the room, jolted awake and said Sam’s name before his eyes were even all the way open. “What’s happening?” he asked, his eyes moving between Mary’s face, Sam’s, and the heart monitor.

Mary didn’t answer for a moment, not wanting to get his hopes up, but then Sam’s hand moved again and his eyes began to roll under their lids as his breaths sped.

“He’s waking up!” she said excitedly. She stood and leaned over the bed, cupping Sam’s face in her hands. “Sam, honey, it’s okay. We’re here.”

She wanted her face to be the first thing he saw when waking, and when his eyes cracked open and fixed on her, she breathed a shaky laugh that sounded more like a sob.

“Hello, love,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

Sam blinked slowly, seeming only half awake.

Dean was frozen, standing on the other side of the bed, his eyes on his brother. Mary smiled encouragingly at him and said, “Talk to him.”

Dean licked his lips and moved a little closer to the bed. “Hey, Sammy.”

Sam tried to turn toward him, but the brace around his neck restricted the movement. His eyes widened, and his breaths came fast as the heart monitor began to race.

“Shh,” Mary soothed. “You can’t move too much yet. You’ve got a neck brace on. You had a fall. Take a deep breath for me. You can do it.”

Sam’s heart continued to climb, and he struggled to turn his head. Mary picked up his hand and pressed it to her chest, exaggerating her breaths so he had something to measure against. “Breathe with me,” she said. “Nice and slow.”

She could see Sam trying, but the panic had gripped him, and he struggled to find the rhythm.

“Come closer, Dean,” she said. “Talk to him.”

She moved back slightly as Dean leaned over the bed so Sam could see him. He stopped struggling against the brace, but his breaths still came too fast.

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean said in the gentle voice he usually reserved for traumatized victims on hunts. “Just breathe.”

When Sam failed to settle, Dean’s eyes darted to Mary. “Should I get someone?”

Mary wasn’t sure whether Dean leaving would make it better or worse for Sam, but as his fingers fisted in the fabric of her shirt and his chest began to rasp, making him cough, she said, “Yes!” quickly and Dean dashed from the room. 

She was worried Sam was going to choke since he couldn’t move his head to clear his throat, and she rubbed his chest gently as he coughed, the same way she had when he was a baby suffering with colic.

“Someone is coming, Sammy,” she said. “We’ve just got to make sure your neck is okay, then he can get this brace off. Take some deep breaths for me.”

Sam closed his eyes and she could see him trying to master himself, but he still coughed and each gasp in made his chest rattle with congestion. She saw now that when they said his chest was clearing, it was relative to what it had been before.

She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his palm. “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you so much.”

Sam began to calm, his breaths coming easier and the cough dying down, though he still looked scared.

She stroked his cheek. “That’s it,” she encouraged. “Nice and slow.”

Sam licked his lips and seemed to be trying to say something. She leaned close to hear, but his words were indecipherable, just a breath against her cheek.

“You’ve had a tube down your throat,” she said. “It might be hard to talk for a while. Just relax.”

Sam cleared his throat and tried again. “Mom,” he rasped, “where’s Jess?”

Mary closed her eyes and felt tears burn. She didn’t want to have to tell him, not while he was already struggling, but she knew he would accept nothing but honesty from her. He believed she was always honest with him and had been since he’d found out the truth about the world, ending the secrets about her ‘job’. He had no idea she was keeping the biggest and worst secret of her guilt from him.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” she said, a tear spilling down her cheek and onto his face as she pressed her forehead to his. “She didn’t…”

Sam drew a shaky breath and whispered, “She’s dead?”

Mary drew back and nodded. “Yes, Sam, she’s gone.”

Sam nodded as much as the brace allowed and closed his eyes.

Mary stroked his cheek and said, “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes remained closed.

Mary grappled for something to say to him, trying to remember anything anyone had said to her after John had died that had helped even a little, but she knew in her heart there was nothing she could do for him. Trying to give him physical comfort was only helping her.

She looked around as the door opened, and Doctor Bates—the one that had been taking care of Sam since he moved to the ward—came in, followed by a nurse she remembered was called Tyson, and Dean. 

“I hear Sam’s awake,” Doctor Bates said cheerfully as she approached the bed.

Mary withdrew her hands from Sam reluctantly and stepped back to allow her and Tyson clear access. She moved to stand with Dean at the end of the bed, watching Sam carefully. He had opened his eyes again, and though they were dry, there was something in them that disconcerted Mary. It wasn’t pain or fear. It was almost as if he was feeling nothing at all.

“Hello, Sam. I’m Doctor Bates,” she said. “I just need to run a few tests and then we can see about getting the brace off. I hear you’re having trouble with it.”

Sam brought a hand to his neck and touched the plastic brace. “I want it off,” he whispered.

“I know, and we will remove it as soon as we can. First, I need you to do something for me.” She picked up his hand and said, “Squeeze as hard as you can.”

Sam’s fingers tightened, and she nodded approvingly before taking a pen from her pocket and moving it across his vision.

“That’s good. Can you follow the pen for me?”

Sam’s eyes tracked the movement and then, at the doctor’s command, he wiggled his toes, wincing slightly.

“Are you having pain?” she asked.

Sam nodded slightly. “My chest and back.”

“How bad is it on a scale of one to ten?”

Sam considered a moment. “Six.”

“Okay, we’ll get you some more pain relief and take you for an MRI scan. If it’s indicated after that, we’ll remove the brace to give you some more movement.”

“Thanks,” Sam said quietly.

The doctor turned back to Mary and Dean and said, “If you could just give us a moment, Tyson will prepare Sam to move to radiology. The MRI will take around an hour, and we’ll need to run some othertests as well. We’ll need Sam for at least two hours, so if you want to get yourself something to eat or some fresh air, now’s the time.” 

Mary looked at Sam, seeing the empty look in his eyes and hating it, as she said, “We’ll be here when you get back, Sam.”

“Okay,” Sam said vaguely.

Mary and Dean walked from the room and stopped in the hall. Mary leaned against the wall and raked her hands over her face. “I had to tell him,” she said miserably. “He asked.”

Dean’s brows pinched together. “About Jess?”

Mary nodded.

He looked confused. “But he was so… Do you think he understood?”

“I think so, but he didn’t really react. He just seemed to close down. He didn’t even cry.”

“Then he didn’t understand,” Dean said decisively. He glanced back at the door. “Let’s call Bobby and give him the good news. We can meet him downstairs. He should be back soon, and Sam probably doesn’t want us watching as he’s taken for his scan.” When Mary failed to move, he tugged her arm and said, “Come on, Mom. Give him a little space.”

Mary rubbed at the tears that had dried on her cheeks and walked with Dean to the elevators. He stayed close to her as they rode downstairs, as if he knew she needed him close, and only moved away when they reached the ground floor and stepped into the lobby.

She was feeling strangely torn. Sam was awake, and that made her feel like she could breathe properly for the first time in days, but his reaction and what she knew was coming for him made her happiness feel less real.

Dean pulled out his phone, but Bobby was already walking towards them, his eyebrows drawing together and his lips pressing into a line of worry when he saw them.

He increased his pace and said, “Sam?”

“He’s awake,” Mary said, a wide smiled breaking over her face and her eyes beginning to burn again. “They’ve taken him for an MRI.”

Bobby breathed out in a gust. “Oh, thank god. How is he?”

Mary had no idea how to explain how Sam was. She wasn’t even sure she knew herself. He’d seemed so different after she told him Jessica was dead. Sam always felt everything so openly. He never hid an emotion, be it happiness, sadness or anger. He shared everything. He was like John in that. Dean was more like Mary; he was able to hide what he was feeling when he needed to. Sam never seemed to feel that need.

“He wanted the brace off,” Dean said when it became obvious Mary wasn’t going to answer.

“It’s probably uncomfortable,” Bobby said. “But what about the rest? Does he know about Jess?”

“He asked me, and I told him,” Mary admitted, the pain of that moment very real to her again. “But maybe he didn’t understand. He didn’t really react.”

Bobby looked startled. “Not at all?”

“Not really. He just closed his eyes. The doctor came in then, so he was distracted.”

“He wouldn’t be distracted from that kind of pain,” Bobby said. “He can’t understand.” As a woman skirted around them with a sigh, he lifted the paper sack in his hand and said, “Let’s get somewhere we can talk. I’ve got sandwiches here.”

They walked together across the lobby to the area where other groups of people were seated on cushioned chairs, some of them looked tense, as if waiting for news, and others exhausted. They found a quiet corner and sat down together.

Bobby handed out long, wrapped sandwiches and cans of coke, but Mary and Dean both held theirs on their laps, making no movement to eat.

“He’s going to be confused,” Bobby said. “It’s natural. Coma patients are usually a little slow when they wake up.”

“I know that,” Mary reminded him. “But he woke up unusually fast. He was stressed about the brace, but he was tracking and talking pretty quick.” She drew in a deep breath to calm her thoughts. “It’s got to be shock. He doesn’t understand yet.”

“What’s going to happen when he does?” Dean asked.

Bobby shrugged. “It’s different for everyone. But the Sam we know, the way he always is, it’s going to be rough to see. He’s not going to be hiding it.”

“I don’t want him to,” Mary stated firmly. “We need to know how he feels so we can help him.”

“We’ll see it,” Bobby said confidently. “And he’ll let us know what to do. Sam always does.”

Feeling slightly comforted, Mary nodded and squeezed Dean’s hand. “We’ll all be able to help him.”

Dean sighed, still looking doubtful. “I sure hope so.”

Mary understood. This was new territory for them all, having to see Sam go through this, but she and Bobby had felt it themselves and could relate in a unique way compared to how Dean would see and feel it. When Dean had lost John, he had grieved in a different way. He’d been confused, and it had taken time for him to understand that what Mary meant when she said his father was gone was that he could never come back. His small world had been torn apart, but it’d happened to him slower than it had to Mary and Bobby with their losses. They had known the finality of death straight away.

But Dean had been amazing so far. He’d dealt with what was happening and comforted Mary as much as he’d been able through his own fear and sadness. She was so proud of him for how he’d handled it, and she knew he was going to continue to make her proud as they helped Sam through it.

She touched his face and kissed his cheek. “I love you, Dean,” she said seriously.

Dean’s looked puzzled. “I know. I love you, too, Mom.”

“I mean it,” Mary said. “And I’m proud of you. You’ve been strong throughout all this.”

“I don’t feel strong,” Dean admitted. “I felt useless back there. I still do.”

“You’re not,” Bobby said. “We don’t know how the next few weeks are going to go for any of us. All we know is that Sam is going to need us, and I’m not worried about how you’re going to handle that. I’ve seen it already. You’ve made us both proud.”

Dean ducked his head, looking pleased. Mary was always open in her affection for her sons; she made sure they knew how much she loved them and how proud she was of them, but Bobby was more reticent. Praise from him was valued by Sam and Dean even more, as it was rarely given and therefore more precious.

Mary thought Bobby had said exactly what Dean needed to hear, and it would help him with what was coming. Sam wasn’t just going to need her and Bobby. He needed Dean, too, perhaps even more, as he looked up to his brother and relied on him in a different way to how he needed them.

She had a feeling Dean was the one that was going to see the most of what Sam was going to feel for the next weeks and months, and Dean was going to rise to the challenge as he always did.

Her son was a good man.


	7. Chapter 7

When they got back to Sam’s room after waiting the requisite two hours, Doctor Bates was just coming out with a man Dean didn’t recognise. They were talking quietly, but when they spotted Mary, Dean and Bobby coming toward them, they stopped and smiled.

“How is he?” Mary asked at once.

Doctor Bates looked pleased. “Sam has given us blanket permission for us to discuss his care with you—which we need now he’s awake—so I can answer any questions you have. He’s doing better than we expected. We examined his chest on the scan as well as his back, and his lungs are clearing well. He’s going to deal with a cough and shortness of breath for a while, but that will settle over time.”

“What about his back?” Dean asked.

The man Dean didn’t know answered. “I’m Peter Kent, a physiotherapist that was brought in to assess Sam. The pain he is suffering is from a muscle strain between his L4 and L5 vertebrae that we believe came from the angle of his body as he fell. There is no other sign of injury to his spine. He was very lucky. He’s going to be in pain for a while, and we’ve advised him to accept a walking aid, but he will heal with time and rest. When the pain is managed, he will need to start gentle exercise. I’ve given him information to follow when he’s ready.”

“Is the neck brace off?” Bobby asked.

“Yes, and he says he is more comfortable now. We have assessed his strength and mobility, and though there is some weakness from the period of time he was inactive, his pre-existing fitness and muscle strength has saved him from the worst of it. I have seen people with much shorter periods of unconsciousness struggle much more than he will. He _is_ very lucky.”

Dean assumed he didn’t know about Sam losing his girlfriend, as no one could label Sam as lucky if they knew about that.

He was glad Sam was doing so well, though. He already had enough to overcome without adding more physical issues. 

“When can we get him out of here?” Bobby asked.

“Not yet,” Doctor Bates said apologetically. “He needs to finish his course of intravenous antibiotics and his lung capacity will need to improve. We will reassess in a few days.”

Mary nodded and held out her hand to the doctor. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

Doctor Bates shook her hand and said, “Sam has done most of this himself. Your son is very strong.”

“He is,” Mary agreed fervently.

Doctor Bates’ pager beeped, and she made a quick apology before rushing away, leaving them with the physiotherapist who said, “In cases like this, it’s easy to want to protect the patient, but that doesn’t always help. Let Sam test his strength when he feels ready. It’s good for him.”

“We will,” Mary said, her eyes drifting to the door that separated them from Sam. It was obvious she wanted to be through it now.

Peter smiled wryly. “I’ll leave you now, but I will probably see you again. I’ll meet with Sam at least once more before his discharge, more if he needs it.”

Mary nodded quickly as she pushed open the door and rushed into Sam’s room. Dean shot Peter an apologetic smile before following her, hearing Bobby thank Peter on their behalf.

Dean was expecting Sam to be in the bed again, resting after what had to have been a tiring afternoon for him, but he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, trying to put on a pair of white rubber-soled slippers.

“Sam,” Mary said, her eyebrows raising. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get these on,” Sam said dully. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Dean could see the conflict on Mary’s face. Like Dean, she obviously would have preferred Sam to be resting, but Dean could tell what the physiotherapist had said about letting Sam do what he could was at the forefront of her mind still. 

“Let me help,” she said.

Sam sighed and straightened up as she rushed to him and eased the shoes onto his feet. When they were securely in place, she held out a hand to Sam, who took it and eased himself upright. He looked unsteady for a moment, and Dean fought the urge to jump in and help, but he got his balance then released Mary and made slow progress to the small bathroom door set into the opposite wall.

Bobby came in and he smiled widely as he saw Sam on his feet. “Sam,” he said, his relief obvious in his voice. “It’s good to see you on your feet, boy.”

“Hey, Bobby,” Sam said, his tone neutral.

Dean realized he’d had no proper greeting from his brother at all, but he thought he preferred that to Sam’s reaction to Bobby. Even without knowing that Bobby had seen him lying unconscious for days, had spent that time worrying about him and willing him to wake, he should have been happy to see Bobby as it had been months since they’d been together. He would have shown more pleasure in it before. It had to be the shock of waking and disorientation, Dean thought, because it couldn’t be grief. Sam still didn’t understand that Jess was gone. He would never be so calm if he did. Perhaps he was upset she wasn’t there with him, too.

Sam walked into the bathroom and clicked the door closed behind him.

There was a thump, as if he had fallen against it, and Mary called his name, worry in her voice. But he called back, “I’m fine,” and there was a strange noise as if he was pushing himself against the wood, then nothing.

“Do you think he’s doing too much?” Mary asked, her eyes moving between Bobby and Dean.

“You heard what they said,” Bobby reminded her. “He has to test himself. He won’t push too hard.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that? Because the Sam _I_ know will absolutely push himself too hard. He’s not going to like feeling weak.”

Bobby shot a glance at Mary and Dean realized that his words had been an empty reassurance meant to comfort Mary, not to tell the truth.

“He’ll be okay,” Mary whispered.

Bobby nodded. “He will. I think he’s—“

He cut off as the bathroom door opened again and Sam peered out, his mouth downturned. “I need a razor,” he stated.

Dean was surprised. He knew Sam hated the feeling of stubble, and the scruff that had grown while he was unconscious was creeping toward a beard now, but he figured something like that would have waited till he’d been conscious more than a few hours.

“We don’t have one,” Bobby said. “We should have thought. Sorry. They sell stuff like that in the gift shop though. I’ll run down and get you one. Is there anything else you need?”

“I need to clean my teeth,” Sam said.

Bobby nodded and said, “I’ll be right back,” before patting Mary’s arm and leaving the room.

Sam closed the door again and Dean sighed. “We should have thought of that,” he muttered. “Everything he had would have been destroyed in the fire.”

“I’ll get him what he needs tomorrow,” Mary said. “He’s going to be here at least a few more days so we can have it all ready for when he gets out.” 

Dean nodded his agreement and an awkward silence settled over them.

Dean hadn’t really thought much past Sam actually waking up other than the pain he was going to suffer emotionally after Jessica’s loss. Had he imagined it, he wouldn’t have expected this. He’d have assumed there would be more time with Sam lying in bed again, conscious this time. He’d have thought he’d be resting more.

Mary was staring at the closed bathroom door and chewing her lip, breaking the stare when Bobby came in carrying a paper sack and a cane. “Peter met me outside and gave me this cane,” he said, walking around Dean and Mary and knocking on the door. “Sam, I’ve got your stuff, and the physio dropped off a cane for you to use.”

The door opened, and Sam reached out. Bobby held out the bag and cane, saying, “I got you a t-shirt, too.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, taking the bag but ignoring the offered cane.

Bobby sighed, and as the door closed again, he said, “Let’s give him a little space. Dean, come back to the motel with me. We’ll get some dinner.”

“I don’t want to leave yet,” Dean said. “Sam might need me.”

“I think Sam just needs his mom right now,” Bobby said, lowering his voice.

Dean scowled, unwilling to leave Sam already, knowing Sam might need him too. “I don’t want to leave him yet. He’s only just woken up.”

“I know.” There was a little too much understanding in his voice to make Dean comfortable. “And I think he is going to need you soon, but maybe not yet. He’s more likely to talk to you than us, but first he needs to actually understand what’s happened, and he doesn’t need us for that. It’s going to hit him hard, and he’s going to have questions. He needs to feel. I think that it’ll be harder if he has to deal with us all at once. Sometimes you just need your mom. You know that.”

Mary nodded, and Dean could tell she was eager to have some time alone with Sam, too.

“Go, Dean,” she encouraged. “I’ll call you if we need you or if anything happens. I promise.”

Reluctant but reassured, Dean knocked on the bathroom door and said, “Sammy, me and Bobby are going to head out. I’ll be back soon.”

There was no response from inside, and Dean frowned. Sam hadn’t acknowledged him at all yet, and now he wasn’t even going to react to the fact he was leaving. It made him even more reluctant to leave.

Mary patted his arm and said, “I’ll make sure he knows, Dean.”

Dean hesitated a moment longer and then accepted her kiss on his cheek and walked through the door out into the hall with Bobby on his heels. He felt a pull back to the room with each step he took, but refused it, as he knew it was about him, not Sam. He wanted to be with his brother, but Sam might not want him there. He knew what Bobby was carefully not saying to spare his feelings—Sam might not feel comfortable being weak in front of him.

Dean would never judge, but he and Sam had never had an emotionally expressive relationship, despite Sam’s attempts. Dean had teased him for it even. He regretted that now as he thought it would be easier for Sam if he didn’t have to censor himself and what he was feeling, but he couldn’t break years of creating a barrier to mushy moments with carefully chosen words now. 

He needed to let Mary do what she could for him and then offer his help when Sam was ready for it.

xXx

Since Bobby had flown into California, he didn’t have a car. He’d been using Mary’s Jeep when he needed to get around after they arrived, and before that he’d stayed in the hospital with Sam. Dean drove them to the motel in the Impala and pulled into a spot outside Bobby’s room.

Bobby climbed out and took his phone from his pocket. “Grab us a couple sodas from the machine,” he said. “I’ll order us a pizza.”

Dean rooted in his pocket for change and fed the machine as Bobby let himself into his room and started talking on the phone, giving their order.

Dean got their drinks and then went into Bobby’s room, closing the propped door behind him and setting the cans down on the table just as Bobby was hanging up. “They said it won’t be long,” he said.

Dean picked up a pen and pad of motel stationery from the bedside table and carried it over to the table, sitting down.

“What are you doing?” Bobby asked.

“Making a list of what Sam is going to need,” Dean said. “He would have lost everything in the fire, so we need to get him stuff to get by until he can shop for himself.”

“That’s a good idea. It’ll save your mom needing to go. We’ll run by a store tomorrow before going back in.”

“You don’t think we’ll have to go back before?” Dean asked, looking up from his list.

Bobby shook his head sadly. “I think he’ll be okay with your mom for a while. Like I said, she’s who he needs.”

“I know,” Dean said reluctantly. “I just…”

He couldn’t put into words what he was feeling. After they’d waited so long, days of fear, Sam was awake, but Dean didn’t feel the relief properly. In a way, Sam’s coolness was worse than if he was breaking down. The fact he hadn’t understood, or maybe accepted, what had happened made it harder for Dean to know what to do. He was scared of what was going to happen to Sam when he finally felt it.

“You’re worried,” Bobby stated. “We all are. But he’s awake now, and he’s getting better; in a few days he’ll probably be out of hospital.”

“He’s so different though,” Dean said. “He’s not feeling it.”

“He wasn’t _then_. For all we know, he could be feeling it right now with your mom. Believe me, Dean, whatever is going on right now can’t last. I’ve lived it. I know what it feels like.”

Dean nodded. Bobby rarely mentioned his wife Karen and what happened to her. Dean and Sam had heard the story of her death without the true facts many years ago when they’d found a wedding photo of her and Bobby. Mary had told them that Bobby had been married, but she’d died. It wasn’t until much later that the full story of how she’d been possessed had come out one night, aided by a bottle of whiskey, on the anniversary of her death.

“What does it feel like?” he asked. “What is Sam going to feel?”

He almost withdrew the question when he saw Bobby’s face, but he didn’t. He needed to know this if he was going to be able to help Sam, and he couldn’t ask Mary while she was so consumed with Sam.

“There aren’t words for how I felt,” Bobby said after a long period of tense silence. “My whole world was torn apart.” He sighed. “I never told you it all. I’ve been weighted with guilt for so long and I didn’t want to admit it, but I think this is going to bear similarities to Sam’s story, so I guess I should. Karen wasn’t killed by the demon that possessed her. She was killed by me.”

Dean’s eyes widened, and he had to make a conscious effort to close his mouth after realizing it had dropped open with shock. 

Bobby smiled knowingly. “The rest is true: she was possessed and tried to kill me. But I tried to kill her, too. It was pure survival instinct. I would never have hurt her otherwise, but she was rabid, coming at me. I stabbed her, but she didn’t drop. After Rufus came and exorcised her, she lived only a minute longer. She died in my arms.”

“I’m so sorry, Bobby,” Dean whispered, horror and pain for his surrogate father filling him.

Bobby rubbed a hand over his face. “I killed her. Sam didn’t kill Jess, but I know about survivors’ guilt, and I know him. I’m sure Sam is going to be blaming himself for what happened, no matter what started that fire. We’re all going to need to help him through that as well as his grief.”

“How do we do that?” Dean asked, at a loss. He knew it was going to take more than just telling him to reach Sam if he didn’t want to hear it. Once Sam got something in his head, something he wanted to do or say, he was relentless. If he was blaming himself for Jessica’s death, it was going to be even worse.

“We listen when he talks and try to guide him to the truth on his own. I think the most important thing we can do is let Sam show us what he needs. For me it was action; Rufus saved my life by taking me into the hunting world.”

“I don’t want Sam hunting!” Dean said quickly. “Not if he’s distracted.”

“Neither do I,” Bobby said. “But I don’t think that’s going to be an issue until his back has healed anyway, and that will take a little time.”

“He’ll tell us what he needs,” Dean said confidently. “Sam’s an open book.”

Bobby looked uncertain. “He _was_. We don’t know what he’s going to be like after this. We might have to work it out for ourselves.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be honest, Dean, I’m scared. Sam feels everything so deeply, and I’m worried about how he’s going to handle this. And there’s things we need to talk to him about that are going to make it worse. The fire department couldn’t nail down a cause for the fire, which makes it more suspicious. If the demon is back, we need to know, which means we have to make him talk about it.”

Dean’s heart lurched. It had taken Bobby years to tell them what happened to his wife, even longer before he admitted the truth of how he’d killed her. He’d hidden it all those years to protect himself. What if Sam did the same? None of them would be able to push him to talk about it, but they needed to know.

“What do we do?” he asked. “He might not be ready yet. I don’t want him hurting even more.”

Bobby looked up at him with sad eyes. “I don’t think we can wait until he’s ready.” Seeing Dean’s anger, he rushed on. “I don’t want to hurt him anymore that you or your mother do—he’s my family, too—but this is bigger than any of us.”

Dean shook his head. “Not until he’s ready.”

“Dean…” Bobby said sadly.

“No,” he said firmly. “I mean it. Sam will tell us when he’s ready.” Seeing that Bobby still didn’t agree, he said, “How would you have felt if it was you, Bobby? If you had to relieve what happened to you and Karen before you were ready? It took you twenty-two years to tell me the whole story.”

“It was different. No one else was in danger after she died. The demon was already in Hell.”

“It’s not going to feel different for him though. He’s got too much to deal with already without having to tell us about how she died. He’ll tell us when he’s ready, and not before.” His jaw jutted out. “And if you try to force him to talk about it, I swear I’ll stop you, whatever it takes.”

“I’d never force him to do anything,” Bobby said, obviously hurt by the threat.

Dean smiled grimly. “Good. He’ll talk about it when he’s ready.”

Bobby sighed. “Okay, okay, I’ll back you, but I think it’s a mistake. We should know as soon as we can.”

“Maybe we should,” Dean said. “But Sam deserves to have time before we make him relive it. We have to give him what peace we can.”

“He’s not having real peace after this,” Bobby said, his eyes dark with sadness. “No matter what we do or say.”

Dean knew that, but if there was a way to protect his brother from more pain, he was going to take it. Sam needed him to.


	8. Chapter 8

**_Chapter Eight_ **

For the first time since he’d woken up in the hospital, Sam was properly alone. There was no one lurking outside the bathroom door, waiting for him to come out, or in the cafeteria just killing time until they could come back; no one asleep in the chair beside the bed, and no one making him feel like he was surrounded by their worry and pain like a fog.

They were worried about him, and he understood it, but their concern felt like a weight pressing in on him. In the absence of anything else to feel, it was overwhelming.

Other than the pain in his back, the tender skin of his healing burn, and his tight chest, it was all Sam felt.

When he was in his apartment, the fire raging around him and Jessica dead on the ceiling, he had felt everything. The pain had been unbearable, and he had wished for death. He hadn’t died—though according to the doctors, he was lucky not to—he just felt like he had. Nothing was real to him. Jessica was gone, and that should make him feel like he was being torn apart. He should want death still, but he simply wanted to be left alone so he wasn’t letting them down with his lack of emotional outpouring.

He didn’t even feel the betrayal it was that he wasn’t grieving for her. He had loved Jessica more than anything or anyone in the world, and now she was dead, but it was like it had happened to someone else. He didn’t remember what it felt like to love at all. He didn’t feel the guilt of how he had let her down that night, either. 

As much as he wanted space from his family, he knew he was going to have to bear their close presence for a while longer as he needed to get out of the hospital. If he went home to Sioux Falls, there would be things for them to do other than sit by his bedside. They would be occupied.

He also needed to be out so Jessica could be buried. Mary told him Michael and Elizabeth were waiting until he could be there—she said it as if it would help him to have that last goodbye—and he didn’t want to keep them or Jessica waiting.

He hadn’t expected there to be any need for a funeral at all. Mary said there wasn’t anything to bury after his father died, but there apparently was for Jessica.

The fact he could think of it so clinically, like she hadn’t burned completely in hellish flames, was wrong and he knew it—but there was no emotional connection to the thoughts.

With his lack of feeling leaving him in an emotional void, he was focusing his mind on going through the motions of other parts of his life. He needed to get out of the hospital, so he was doing the exercises that would help rebuild his lung capacity after the pneumonia. The physiotherapist recommended exercise for when he felt ready, when the pain was manageable, so he did them. He walked circuits of his room with the cane at first, then extended his route up the hall with one of his family members walking at his side, watching him build his strength again, always waiting for him to falter so they could save him. He still had a cough and his breath was sometimes hard to catch, but it was improving. He just got tired fast.

He had decided he was ready to leave that morning and had started to plan how he could make his exit. He’d known he needed to be alone to do it, as any of his family would try to stop him, so he had persuaded them to leave with difficulty. As soon as they’d gone, he’d put in a call to the one memorized number he had of a person he knew whom was going to be willing to break rules for him, or at least too high to care that he was getting out: Brady. Now he was waiting for his arrival, drumming his fingers on his knees.

He had to wait another twenty minutes before the door opened and Brady peered in. He seemed tense, as if he was imagining a worse scene than Sam sitting in the chair beside his bed, his things packed and ready at his feet. He looked surprised for a moment, and then his expression became the sympathetic smile Sam was used to seeing from his family. The only thing Brady didn’t share with them was the worry that tightened their eyes. He didn’t know yet just how messed up Sam was.

“Hey, man,” he said, coming in the room. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Sam said, no emotion behind the words to reassure Brady.

Brady’s eyebrows rose, and Sam knew he hadn’t given him the response he should have. He didn’t like to lie, but perhaps it would be better if he had. Brady had been Jessica’s friend, too. He would be grieving. Sam probably seemed cruel to him for his words.

Brady quickly schooled his expression into a neutral smile and said, “That’s good. We were all really worried about you for a while. Sorry we haven’t been in to see you before.”

“It’s okay.” Sam thought it was better that they hadn’t come. He would have disappointed more people with his inability to feel if they had seen him.

“We tried at first,” Brady said. “I came with Luis, and Zach and Becky also tried, but they said it was restricted to family only. Then they told us your mom and brother had arrived, so we figured it was better to leave you. I tried calling, but your phone wasn’t working.”

“It burned,” Sam said blandly.

Brady looked stricken. “Oh yeah. I didn’t think. I’m sorry, man. About Jess. I know how much you two…”

Sam held up a hand to halt his words. “Thanks.”

Brady looked guilty, as if he thought Sam had stopped him because it was too painful to hear her name. It wasn’t. He just knew it was wrong to hear it and feel nothing when it should destroy him.

“I would have saved her if I’d known she was in there,” Brady said, a tinge of desperation in the words that seemed forced from him. “I didn’t see her, so I thought you were alone. And you were in a bad way by then. I had to get you out. And then it blew, so there was nothing I could…” He shook his head.

Sam remembered Brady dragging him out of the fire, but he thought it would be easier if he feigned amnesia of the event now rather than be forced to lie to everyone that would surely ask about it. Especially Elizabeth and Michael. It wouldn’t be right to create a story for them of how he had tried to save Jessica but had been forced back by the flames. And they would expect him to have tried. If he remembered nothing, they wouldn’t create him as a wannabe hero in their minds.

“I don’t remember it,” he said, his empty voice not betraying the lie. “None of it. So, you were the one that got me out?”

“Yeah,” Brady said. “I barely got you out before it blew, and then you were thrown over the railing and down the stairs.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, trying hard to force inflection into his voice. “You saved my life.”

Brady shrugged. “I feel like I should have done more.”

Sam had nothing to say to that, so he stayed silent.

Brady’s eyes fell on his bag and he said, “Are they letting you out already?”

“That’s the plan,” Sam said. “I was hoping you’d give me a ride. My family are in the Coronet Motel.”

“Sure. No problem. Is there anything you need to do before we go?”

“I’ve got to see a doctor to get discharged. Would you go ask someone if there’s one I can talk to?”

Brady nodded, then hesitated as Sam bent slowly in his seat and pulled his sneakers over to him. They were all that remained of the clothes he’d been wearing when he was admitted, as he’d been cut out of everything else.

“You need help?” Brady asked as Sam struggled to lift his leg to pull his shoe on.

“I’ve got it,” Sam said. “Just need someone to help me get out of here.”

“Yeah, of course.” Brady ducked out of the room, and Sam let a small moan escape him from the pain in his back. Sitting was uncomfortable—even with the painkillers—and walking was worse, but bending like this made him feel like there was a red-hot brand on his back. He gave up trying to put his shoes on properly and just shoved his feet into them, crushing the back under his heels. He wasn’t going to ask Brady to help him as if he was a child. Just because _he_ didn’t care, it didn’t mean it wouldn’t be uncomfortable for Brady.

Brady came back in, followed by Doctor Bates, whom Sam had gotten to know from her rounds, carrying a clipboard. She seemed nice enough, and Mary seemed to really like her. Sam only cared that she would let him out without him needing to sign out against medical advice, therefore worrying his family. 

“You’re thinking of leaving us, Sam?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I feel ready.”

She considered for a moment. “I would have liked to keep you in at least one more night for observation, but if you can assure me you’ll take it easy when you are home, I can discharge you.”

“I will,” Sam agreed, glad he wasn’t going to need to persuade her further. 

She took a pen from her top pocket and wrote something on the paper pinned to the clipboard. She brought it over to him and indicated where he was to sign. Sam scrawled his signature, the one Jessica always teased him looked like a movie star’s autograph, and handed it back.

Doctor Bates unclipped a piece of paper and said, “This is a prescription for painkillers and antibiotics. You’ll need to finish the course of antibiotics to clear the residual infection and take the painkillers when you need them. There’s also an ointment to use on your arm. You’ll need to be careful to keep it out of direct sunlight for now. Your family doctor can advise you when it’s safe to be a little more relaxed with it. Use the cane as much as you feel you need. It’s there to help you. I’ve written it all down here.”

Sam nodded, and took the folded paper she was holding out to him.

“If you have any problems with your breathing that concerns you or your family, increasing shortness of breath or wheezing, see a doctor straight away. Just because you’re feeling better now doesn’t mean your body isn’t still healing.”

“I’ll be careful,” Sam said. “Thanks.”

She turned a page of the clipboard and said, “We already have your release of information form signed, so that’s okay. We have two addresses for family doctors here. Should I send copies of your notes to both?”

“No, just Kravitz in South Dakota. I won’t be in town long.”

She made a note and held out a hand to Sam. He took shook it as she said, “It was good to meet you, Sam. Take care of yourself.

“Thanks,” Sam said, getting to his feet and bending awkwardly to pick up his bag.

Brady strode over and snagged it up before Sam could reach it, and Sam nodded his thanks.

“I’ll have an orderly bring a wheelchair for you.”

Sam didn’t want to be wheeled out, but he was in already in pain and knew it wasn’t worth arguing against hospital policy for something that he didn’t really care about.

She smiled and nodded before leaving them room with a quick farewell. After a minute of silence that Brady didn’t try to break—instead looking out of the window, his brow furrowed—a man came in pushing a wheelchair.

He brought it to Sam’s side and Brady asked, “You ready?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, easing himself up and onto the wheelchair. 

“Good. Let’s get you back to your family. They’re who you need right now.”

Sam didn’t answer. He knew he did need his family, they were all he had left now, but he didn’t feel the love they were trying to show him with their words and actions. There was no comfort to being around them. It was worse than being alone, even. But they needed him, so he would go to them and stay until he decided what he was going to do next with his life, be it leave them to escape their pity and worry, or stay and try to find the broken pieces of himself again to form a thinking and feeling person.


	9. Chapter 9

ter, making coffee for them—not because any of them had shown particular signs of wanting it, but because she needed something to do.

Sam had asked them to leave an hour ago, and Mary was already fighting the urge to drive right back to the hospital. As hard as it was to be with him while he was the way he was, it was much harder to be away.

Though he seemed to have accepted the fact of Jessica’s death—he had understood when Mary had told him the funeral wasn’t going to be held until he was able to attend—he hadn’t said anything else about it. He’d barely said a word about anything at all, in fact. He listened when they spoke, and he would answer questions, but there was nothing else. He didn’t offer up anything in return. He was shut down.

It worried Mary that he hadn’t broken down and expressed his grief yet. She knew it would come, and the delay in it would probably make it worse when it did happen. She just wanted to help him; he was her son and she loved him, but she didn’t know how. Bobby said he’d show them what he needed, but there had been nothing.

The only clue they had to what he needed came that day, and that was when he’d asked them to leave. None of them had felt able to refuse, not when they were waiting for him to guide them even a little, but they all agreed that they felt even more useless when they were gone.

Sam wasn’t himself. It wasn’t just that he wanted to be alone—even though that was the opposite of what he usually wanted—it was that he hadn’t seemed to care when they had made their goodbyes and left. He’d shown no relief. He’d been indifferent. Sam had always been a people person; he’d hated to be alone. When he was upset about something, he clung to them even harder. But now, when he was going through the very worst thing he’d ever lived through, he didn’t seem to care whether they were there or not. 

He was completely closed off from them.

Dean was just as worried as she was, and she suspected Bobby was, too, but he was better to hide it. Dean hadn’t seen this kind of grief since he was four years old, and Mary had shielded her sons from it as much as she could then—comforting and consoling them, saving her tears for when she alone when she could manage it. She’d saved the hours of darkness, when Dean was sleeping and Sam had been settled once again, for herself to grieve. Dean had been scared of what Sam was going to be like when he woke up, she knew, but what he’d imagined hadn’t been as bad as what they were living. Their gentle, open-hearted Sam had been replaced by a shell that didn’t seem able to share one iota of what he was feeling. He had to be in so much pain, and he was hiding it not only from her, but from them all.

When the coffee pot gurgled its last, Mary poured three cups and delivered one each to Bobby and Dean, then sat down on the edge of the bed, holding her own.

Bobby closed his journal with a sigh and said, “We’ve got to talk.”

Dean looked up, his eyes narrowed. Mary was confused by his reaction, even more so when growled, “He’s still not ready, Bobby. We’re not asking.”

Bobby held up a hand to him. “I’m not talking about that. Not really. But since this is the first time the three of us have been alone together since Sam woke up, _we_ need to talk about it.”

Mary frowned. “What am I missing?”

“The fire,” Bobby said. “They found no cause for it, so it’s another check on the demon column. I’ve promised Dean I wouldn’t ask Sam about it until he was ready—”

“And he’s not,” Dean interjected.

Bobby nodded. “I agree, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it together. If that yellow-eyed bastard is back, we need to prepare ourselves.”

Mary set down her cup on the bedside table and raked her hands over her face. “It could be him. I was hoping there would be something, anything, that they could say started the fire, but they couldn’t find a single thing when they investigated the house after John either.”

“And there’s the date,” Bobby said. “It was exact.”

“Why Jess though?” Dean asked.

Bobby looked down at his hands where they were fisted on the table and said, “I don’t think it was Jess.”

“But she was killed,” Dean said blankly.

Mary frowned and then gasped as what Bobby was trying to say became clear. “You think he was there for Sam?”

Bobby’s eyes were dark with pain as he looked up and replied, “That’s what I’m scared of. Sam’s nursery. Sam’s apartment. Two people he loved, killed, while he survived.”

“But he only survived then because I got him out!” Mary said, a tinge of hysteria in her voice. “If I hadn’t been there, the fire would have spread and he would have…”

“I know,” Bobby said quietly.

The clearest memory of Mary’s entire life was that night. She remembered the way the blood felt on the back of her hand as it had dripped from John on the ceiling. She remembered the way the heat had hit her like a wave when the fire started. Sam’s cries, the way he had felt when she’d snatched him into her arms, the exact weight—all this was burned into her mind. If she hadn’t heard John’s voice as she’d lain there in bed, the note of shock in it, she wouldn’t have gotten up. The fire, the smoke, would have killed Sam, too.

“And if his friend hadn’t pulled him out this time, he would have died then,” Bobby went on heavily. “He very nearly did anyway. Why a demon would choose fire when it’s got many more effective ways, I don’t know, but if it was, it could mean Sam is still in danger. Even if he’s not the intended target, he’s the connection, and that means the demon could come back. I know neither of you want to hear it, and I don’t want to say it, but we’ve got to know for sure. Which, means we have to ask him about it soon.”

“He’s a mess,” Dean said. “We can’t put this on him.” He looked imploringly at Mary. “He’s hurting."

“He is,” Mary agreed. “And I don’t want to hurt him even more, but he could be in danger.”

Dean blew out a breath. “I know,” he said, his tone defeated. “But let’s just give him a little longer. He asked us to leave, but he didn’t say when we could go back. We let him have the rest of the day and then we go back tonight. We’ll get him something decent to eat on the way and then we’ll talk to him. _I’ll_ talk to him.”

“You sure you can?” Bobby asked. “It’s not going to be pleasant to ask him to talk about this.”

“I can do it,” Dean said decisively.

Mary nodded her agreement. She would shield Dean from needing to ask if she thought it would help, but she thought Sam was more likely to open up to him than her or Bobby. He had a different relationship with Dean, in some ways closer. He might be able to talk to Dean when he couldn’t her or Bobby.

“Okay,” Bobby said. “We’ll let you go in alone. We need to know everything he remembers about that night, especially if he saw anyone else or if there were strange smells.”

Dean frowned. “Strange smells?”

“Sulfur,” Mary said softly. “One of the signs demons leave is sulfur. He might have smelled it, or even seen it.”

Dean looked from Mary to Bobby. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

Mary hesitated a moment before answering, unsure of whether to tell him the truth. She didn’t want to add another lie to her score, and she thought Dean deserved the truth, so she said, “Because I didn’t want you or Sam anywhere near demons after what happened to your father, so I didn’t give you any reason to look for them. I didn’t tell you about them.”

Dean’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You didn’t think I could handle it?”

“No one knows better than me how good a hunter you are,” Mary soothed. “But demons are always better. They have strength and powers that we don’t, and they have no conscience holding them back. I was worried that if you knew how to find them, what signs they left, you would go after them as revenge for John, and I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Dean didn’t look mollified. “I would have been careful. I know about holy water; Sam read it in that book. And there are exorcisms.”

Mary felt a twinge of pain as her suspicions of what Dean would have done were confirmed—he would have sought revenge.

“Holy water is nothing,” Bobby said. “It hurts them, sure, but it doesn’t stop them for long. Your mom made the right call.”

“But the demon you saw, Mom, the one with yellow eyes that killed Dad, I thought we were going to stop him.”

“We were,” Mary said. “That’s why I started hunting again, but when it disappeared, I made a choice to keep you and Sam away from the others. We don’t know why it was in Sam’s nursery that night, but it cost us your father. I didn’t want to draw any more attention to our family than what was already there.”

“It might be too late for that now,” Dean said frustratedly. “If the demon did kill Jess, we’ve got its attention. It could be coming for Sam.”

Mary winced. She was hoping and praying that it was a coincidence, that the fire was natural, as the only other conclusion she could draw was that Sam was in danger. Had the demon seen something in her that would draw him to her son? She had made the deal ten years to the day before Sam had been born. Six months later it had come to his nursery and killed John. They had to know if the demon was really back. 

Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “If it is back, I need to know everything so I can help you stop it. What’s this gun you were talking about?”

“It’s called the Colt,” Mary said. “It was a story your grandfather told me when I was young. The story is that Samuel Colt made a gun in 1835 that had the power to kill anything.”

“We don’t know if it’s real, though.” Bobby sighed. “No one has ever seen it.”

“But there have been rumours,” Mary added quickly. “The journals that you inherited from other hunters sometimes talk about it. _I_ believe it’s real.” 

Bobby gave her a knowing look, and she knew what he wasn’t saying—she believed it because she needed to. If the Colt wasn’t real, the most she could do was exorcise the yellow-eyed demon. That wouldn’t last long. If Mary was right that it had been exorcised when it had disappeared the spring after John’s death, it meant the longest an exorcism would last was twenty-two years. She needed to kill it dead if she was going to save her family. She would be an old woman in twenty-two years, if she was even alive. She wouldn’t be able to protect them then. It had to be stopped now. 

“So we find this gun and kill the demon,” Dean said with a curt nod.

His voice told her that he felt no doubt that they could do it, which meant he didn’t truly understand just how dangerous it was. He had too much confidence in their combined abilities. They’d never lost before. She wouldn’t break his faith now, not when he was already preparing himself for that conversation with Sam. When they knew more, if they needed to, even, she would sit both her sons down and make sure they understood what danger the yellow-eyed demon posed and how hard it was going to be to stop him.

She would do what she could to prepare them. 


	10. Chapter 10

**_Chapter Ten_ **

Mary had known Dean wanted to talk to her alone, so she’d suggested they make a run to the grocery store together to pick up some supplies. He hadn’t said much during the ride to the store, and he hadn’t engaged with the young cashier’s flirting as he usually would have; Mary was starting to think he wasn’t going to open up at all, when he suddenly slammed the trunk of the Impala closed and said, “I don’t want to force this, Mom,” his voice heavy with worry. “It’s going to make it worse for him.”

Mary smiled gently at her son, understanding how this must be worrying him, especially with his brother so vulnerable. “You’re not conducting an interrogation here, or forcing a confession,” she said. “You open the topic and let him talk. Don’t push him. Sam will tell you what he knows.”

“What if he doesn’t, though? He’s not been himself since he woke up. He could shoot me down or ignore me.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “I know we have to do this, _I_ have to, but I don’t want to hurt him.”

Mary rubbed his arm. “I know, honey. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I thought I could do it instead. But I believe he’ll be more open with you than anyone else. You’re right, he might not want to talk, so you have to encourage him as much as you can.”

She didn’t want to tell him to push, as that wasn’t fair on either of them. If Sam needed to be pushed to talk, she would make sure it was her or Bobby that did it. It would hurt them to do, but she would rather they were the ones in pain, not Dean, and she knew Bobby felt the same. They both tried to protect Sam and Dean as much as they could, no matter how old they got.

“Do I tell him what we’re thinking about him being the target?” he asked.

“No!” Mary said firmly, and then softened her voice. “He doesn’t need to know that at this point. We might be wrong, so we’d just be scaring him for nothing. And Bobby thinks he probably has survivors’ guilt already. If Sam thinks she was killed by something that came for him, it will tear him apart.”

Dean looked relieved. “Yeah. Okay.” He checked his watch. “I’ll drop you off at the motel and then head back to the hospital.”

It wasn’t evening yet, and that was when Dean had planned to go, but Mary figured he couldn’t bear to wait any longer. He needed to get it done, to face what was coming head on, and then deal with the fallout after.

Mary was sure both her sons were going to need her more, each in their own way, after this. If it was the demon, Dean was going to be ready for revenge, and Sam was going to be scared. She only hoped he’d let himself show it. 

Dean walked around the car and climbed behind the wheel. Mary slid in beside him and relaxed a little as he reversed them out of their spot and patted his hand against the wheel to the beat of the music pouring from the tape deck. He seemed a little less tense now, perhaps because he wasn’t waiting for it to be the right time to do something. He was always better with action instead of waiting. When they took civilian cases that involved them watching suspects for hours at a time, he struggled to keep his patience. Mary usually tried to assign separate duties when they worked together for something like that. Dean would run the records and research while she took the stakeouts.

They arrived at the motel and Dean frowned. There was a new model Audi TT parked in the spot outside Bobby’s room that the Impala had recently vacated. It was a nicer looking car than Mary had seen in the motel lot before, as the place catered to a less well-funded clientele. There was a Stanford Cardinal’s sticker on the bumper, and Mary wondered if one of Sam’s friends had found them. Sam knew where they were staying, though why he’d sent a friend to them she wasn’t sure.

Dean pulled up beside it, then climbed out of the Impala and opened the trunk, giving the Audi a confused look. Mary lifted out a sack and Dean picked up the second, leading the way to the room. He knocked on the door, and after a moment Bobby answered, looking tense.

“What’s wrong?” Mary asked worriedly.

Bobby stepped back and waved Dean in. Mary followed, almost bumping into Dean just inside where he had come to a dead stop. She looked around him and understood what had made him freeze. Sam was sitting at the table, the cane propped up beside him and his face drawn with pain. Sitting in the other chair was a man that looked around Sam’s age. His blond hair was carefully styled and his handsome face troubled as he looked pointedly at the opposite wall, obviously uncomfortable with the tension in the room. 

“What are you doing here?” Dean asked, his voice harsh as he looked at Sam.

“Easy, Dean,” Bobby cautioned behind them.

Dean’s shoulders slumped, and he walked to the bed and dropped the sack of groceries down on it.

“We didn’t know you were getting out,” Mary said, handing Bobby her own and approaching Sam.

Sam looked past her and answered Dean. “I spoke to the doctor and she let me out early.”

“And you feel well enough for that?” Mary asked cautiously.

“Yes,” Sam said with a decisive nod.

Mary was torn. She wasn’t sure Sam was ready to be out of hospital—he was still in pain, and as he covered his mouth to cough, she heard the congestion in his chest—but she didn’t want to upset him by forcing him to go back. She reassured herself that he said the doctor had let Sam out, and she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t think he was ready. And Sam wouldn’t lie to her about this. The doctor must have said it. 

There was a moment of awkward silence, which the man with Sam broke by clearing his throat and standing with a hand held out to Mary, saying, “Hey, I’m Brady. You must be Sam’s mom.”

“Sorry,” Bobby apologized. “This is Mary and Dean. Brady is the one that got Sam out of the apartment.”

“Oh!” Mary said as one hand gripped Brady’s and the other came to her chest. “Thank you so much. I meant to find you sooner, but things have been so…”

“I get it,” Brady said with a kind smile. “And I don’t need thanks. I’m glad I was able to help. I’m just sorry I couldn’t save… I’m just sorry.”

Mary glanced at Sam quickly, wondering if there would be some reaction to Brady’s words, the quick abortion before Jessica’s name could be mentioned, but he looked neutral still.

Dean came to shake Brady’s hand, too, adding his own heartfelt thanks for what he had done for them by saving Sam.

“Were you very hurt?” Mary asked Brady, gesturing for him to take a seat while she and Dean sat on the edge of the bed and Bobby leaned against the wall.

“Just bruises and a little smoke inhalation,” Brady said. “They kept me in the ER a few hours, but after that I was good to go. The bruises are gone already. I got lucky. I hit the rail that Sam went over.”

Mary flinched as she imagined how it would have looked, what Brady had seen, how Sam would have looked crumpled at the bottom on the stairs. 

“Do you live in the same building as Sam?” Dean asked.

Mary glanced at Brady as she waited to answer. She hadn’t given any thought to the other apartments that would have been damaged, maybe even destroyed, by the fire. Everything that had happened had obliterated thoughts of anyone else’s home and life.

“No, I’m a couple blocks away on Bryant Street. I was coming to see Sam as I’d just gotten his message when I heard the alarms and saw the people evacuating. I couldn’t see Sam and…” He caught himself again. “They weren’t out there, so I took a chance and checked their apartment really quick.”

“We’re damn lucky you did,” Dean said fervently, seeming to have moved past his anger at Sam now he was faced with the alternative to having him sitting there with them.

Brady nodded. “It all happened fast after that. Sam was carted off and then they were trying to get the fire under control. The building’s a mess now.” He chanced a glance at Sam. “The Kaplinskys are in one of those long-stay motels outside town.”

Sam didn’t acknowledge his words. He just looked at Brady and said in a flat voice, “I need some numbers. I lost my phone.”

Brady patted his pocket. “Yeah, I forgot about that, but Becky already wrote them all down for you.” He took out a piece of yellow paper from his jacket and handed it to Sam. “Here you go.”

Sam unfolded the paper and frowned. “You don’t have a number for Jessica’s parents?”

Brady shook his head. “No, I always called you guys on your cells when you were up there visiting. I can try and get it for you.”

“No need,” Mary said, pulling her wallet from her pocket. “I have it.”

Sam watched as she found the card and held it out to him. He took it and said, “Can I use someone’s phone?”

“I got you one yesterday,” Dean said. “It’s just a burner. We’ll get you a better one when you can pick it, but it’s charged. It’s in our room. I’ll go grab it.”

Sam turned his empty eyes on Mary. “Can I borrow your cell?”

Dean looked disappointed that his helpful gesture had fallen flat, and he perched on the edge of Bobby’s bed with downcast eyes. 

Mary gave Sam her phone, and he picked up his cane and made slow progress out of the door, letting it click closed behind him.

Brady blew out a breath. “Wow,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t going to be good after Jess, but even I didn’t expect that. I’ve never seen him like this before.”

“None of us have,” Mary said, squeezing Dean’s hand where it was gripping his knee.

“And this is what it’s like when he doesn’t remember what happened,” Brady said. “Can you imagine what it’d be like if he actually saw her die?”

Mary’s heart lurched, and Dean’s head snapped up. “He doesn’t remember?” he asked.

Brady looked confused. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Bobby said, his voice weak with shock.

“Yeah, he told me he doesn’t remember any of it. He hit his head pretty hard when he went down, so I guess it wiped his slate.” He looked from Mary’s horrified face to Bobby’s and said, “It’s a good thing he doesn’t remember though, right?”

“Yes,” Bobby said, his tone betraying the lie. “It’s better.”

Bobby gave Mary a look laden with meaning, and she nodded slightly. She understood what he was thinking, as she was thinking the same thing. If Sam didn’t remember, they wouldn’t be able to ask him if he’d seen anything. They would have no clue to whether it was the yellow-eyed demon or not.

Brady clapped his hands down on his knees. “I should get going. I guess I’ll see you all at the funeral.”

Bobby opened the door and held out a hand to him. Brady shook it and looked embarrassed as Bobby said, “If there’s anything we can do for you, just ask. We owe you for Sam.”

“Um, okay, I’ll let you know,” Brady said awkwardly, slipping through the door. 

Bobby started to close the door, but it was caught by a hand and Sam limped back into the room, leaning heavily on his cane.

He pushed his hair back from his face wearily and said, “The funeral is Saturday in Sacramento. I need a suit.”

“I’ll get you one,” Mary said quickly, getting to her feet. “Do you want me to pick one out, or shall we go together?”

She hoped he would let her do it, as she didn’t want him pushing himself too hard while he was healing, so she was relieved when he said, “No. You can get it.”

“I’ll go look for something now,” she said, touching his shoulder and trying not to notice as his muscles bunched at the contact. “Do you have any prescriptions you need me to pick up?”

Sam shook his head and patted a paper bag on the table. “I got them already.”

“Hold up,” Bobby said, shooting Mary a regretful look. “Brady says you don’t remember the fire, Sam.”

Sam shook his head. “No, it’s blank from leaving Scotty’s that night to waking up in the hospital. I only knew she was dead when Mom told me. I didn’t know it was a fire until I asked the doctor what had happened to me.”

Mary realized they should have spoken about this sooner. The fact Sam had accepted Jessica’s death so easily and not asked what had happened to put him in the hospital in the first place should have tipped her off to the truth. She had been so consumed with his physical condition, waiting for him to break emotionally, that she had missed the clues she should have seen. The story of what had happened shouldn’t have come from a doctor. If should have been one of them that told him.

“And there was nothing before that?” Bobby asked. “Nothing strange. No funny smells?”

Sam frowned. “I would have noticed a gas leak.”

“No, not that,” Bobby said, his eyes worried. “Nothing like rotten eggs?”

Sam shook his head. “The strangest thing I smelled was Brady’s bong when he left it at our place before the Halloween party. There was nothing else.”

Bobby sighed, and Dean shot Mary a worried look. She understood the fear he was feeling as she felt it, too. They still didn’t know what had caused the fire.

“I’m tired,” Sam said heavily.

“Of course,” Mary said. “There’s a room next door for you and Dean, and I am on the other side. Do you want me to help you?”

“I can handle it,” Sam said, getting to his feet.

Looking upset, Dean took the key to their room from his jacket and gave it to his brother, who limped out of the room without a word. Mary followed and stepped in front of him before he could reach the door. Sam frowned at her, the expression not fading when she pressed a kiss to his cheek and cupped his face in her hands. He started to pull away, and then stopped, seeming to master the impulse.

“I love you, Sam,” she said seriously.

For a moment she thought she saw something flicker in Sam’s eyes, but it vanished before she could read it properly, and he was left looking blank again.

“Thanks,” he said dully, his head ducking and his shoulders hunched.

She moved aside and watched as he let himself into his room, not looking away until the door had closed behind him. Only then did she go to the Jeep and climb behind the wheel. She took a breath, trying to keep a grip on the stranglehold she had on her emotions, and then started the engine.

She backed out of her spot and drove out onto the road, her eyes burning. She made it only a meager five-hundred yards before she pulled the vehicle over in a no waiting zone and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook and her chest clenched as she sobbed.

For days she had been keeping a lid on how she felt, controlling her panic and pain so as not to affect Sam and Dean, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. Everything that had happened was washing over her. She had almost lost her son. Jessica _had_ died. Sam had survived, but the version of him that was left was unfamiliar to her. She didn’t know what to do for him. He didn’t even accept her love as he would have before. She felt useless, and more than anything, she wished John was there to lean on.

He was gone though, like Jess, and she had to take care of both her boys alone. One of them was looking to her for guidance to cope with this new version of his brother and the threat he may be under, and the other didn’t look to her for anything at all.

She felt helpless and alone as she cried, suddenly overwhelmed by the strength of her emotions.


	11. Chapter 11

**_Chapter Eleven_ **

Despite the fact his life was more steeped in death than most people’s, Dean hadn’t been to many funerals. The time he spent in cemeteries was usually limited to the dead of night when they were there for a salt and burn. The few that he had seen were nothing like this—they were a small group of hunters around a pyre and few words spoken.

This service couldn’t have been more different.

On one side of the grave were rows upon rows of seats where Jessica’s family and Sam sat, and opposite there were people standing. There were too many to have a visible place at the graveside, and Mary, Dean and Bobby were a few rows back, even though they’d arrived early.

It looked as though everyone Jessica had known at Stanford had all made the trip for the funeral, and there were others of varying ages that Dean guessed were more distant family and people from her hometown. Dean couldn’t even imagine knowing this many people, let alone being close enough to them that they would come to his funeral.

Sam had tried to stand further back with them, but Jessica’s father had sought him out and led him to sit between Jessica’s mom, Elizabeth, and an elderly woman that Dean guessed was Jessica’s grandmother.

During the service, Elizabeth had gripped Sam’s hand tightly, her other hand finding her husband’s. Dean was pleased but surprised that Sam allowed the touch. He hadn’t been big on close contact since he’d woken up, though Mary continued to test that with her usual easy and affectionate touches. 

The open grief of the people there, so much worse among Jessica’s family, was painful to see. The contrast between them, the tears that fell from the men and women’s eyes, their lips pressed into thin lines to hold back the sounds of pain, made Sam’s masklike face stand out even more. He showed nothing.

When they lowered Jessica’s coffin into the ground, Jessica’s mother had taken a step forward as if she wanted to join her there. Michael had guided her back with a hand on her arm, and she had allowed him to snake his arms around her, her hand still holding Sam’s. It was heart-breaking. Dean couldn’t imagine that kind of grief, though it could easily have been his, too, if Brady hadn’t been there.

Brady was standing with a group of people close to Dean and his family, a petite young woman with brown hair beside him. When the pastor had started the eulogy, she had buried her face in Brady’s chest and sobbed. 

The eulogy had included many things Dean didn’t know about Jessica. She was the second youngest of three sisters and two brothers, and was an aunt to twin boys. She was an artist, and in school she’d won a state-wide prize for one of her pieces. There were other things he did know: she was a kind and caring person that was studying pre-law; she wanted work in prosecution while Sam wanted to work in defence.

Sam was mentioned more than once. When a man that was introduced as Jessica’s brother, Flynn, spoke about Jessica’s first forays into romance and how they’d ended disastrously, he explained how relieved the family had been when she’d brought Sam home to meet them all as, at last, she’d found someone that would treat her the way she deserved to be treated. Keeping his place beside his wife, Michael had spoken of how they had small comforts when they remembered her life, like the fact—as he and Elizabeth had spoken of at the hospital—she had known true love with Sam. 

Dean had watched Sam when he had been mentioned, hoping to see some sign of reaction, a clue he was coming back to them and sharing how he felt at his loss, but there had been none. Perhaps Mary had seen the same thing, as she had taken Dean’s hand at the same time and squeezed it gently.

Dean knew Sam was hurting, but he wasn’t showing it to anyone. Dean had feared that people there would judge Sam for it, but no one seemed surprised. Dean figured they knew that some grief was too painful to share, that it had to be felt internally and personally.

The service ended with one last prayer, and people began to drift away to the parking lot, some of them stopping to speak to Jessica’s family and Sam. It seemed that Sam knew almost all of Jessica’s family, even the more distant ones that had sat at the very back. When they came to speak to Jessica’s parents, they also spoke to him.

Sam had nodded and obviously said the right things, as they didn’t look confused or upset with him as they walked away. When the two little boys Dean guessed were Jessica’s nephews came from where they’d been held in the last row, back from the more upsetting parts of the service but still present to say goodbye to their aunt, they had looked pleased to see Sam. The bolder of the two had beamed up at him with his hands lifted. Sam had smiled, the first smile Dean had seen from him since he woke, and bent forward in his chair to say something, accepting the child’s arms around his neck. He looked pained as he’d straightened, and Dean knew he was suffering even more with his back for the gesture of kindness. 

As the elderly woman that had sat beside Sam kissed his cheek, and the man with her held one of Sam’s palms between his own, his expression intense, Dean realized for the first time that this was Sam’s life away from them. He knew these people that Dean, Mary and Bobby had never met. The holidays and weekends he and Jessica had come to Sacramento to visit had formed relationships with these people. They were his family, too.

When the last person had drifted away from the chairs and Sam was left alone to stare at the grave in front of him, Mary touched Dean’s arm and said, “Go talk to him.”

Dean felt a heavy weight drop into his stomach. “Now?” He couldn’t think of a situation in which Sam would be less open to conversation.

“He might open up,” Mary said. “This might be the thing that breaks the wall down for him. He needs you.”

Bobby nodded his agreement. “I think you’re our best shot. We’ll wait at the car.”

Dean took a deep breath to brace himself and said, “Sure, okay, I’ll try.”

Mary patted his cheek. “Thank you, Dean.”

He didn’t need to be thanked for this; it was as much his job to help Sam as anyone’s. 

He skirted the grave and walked toward his brother slowly. Sam didn’t seem to notice his approach; his eyes remained fixed on the grave, his face pained. Dean couldn’t tell if it was physical or emotional.

He had been sore after the two hours spent on the road to Sacramento the day before, and he hadn’t slept well enough to allow his back to rest—Dean had heard him moving around each time he woke. He was going to be in more pain in the coming days as they were driving home to Sioux Falls. Sam couldn’t fly as his chest was still weak from the pneumonia, and though Mary had suggested they stay until he could, Sam had said they should get home. It was the first real indication of what he wanted to do, so they’d not argued it. Bobby was going to fly to get back to work and prepare the place for them.

But if Sam was in pain now, there was something they could do for it, so he cleared his throat to announce his presence and asked, “Do you want some painkillers? Mom’s got them in her purse.”

Sam shook his head slowly. “I’m fine.”

“Mind if I sit?”

Sam shrugged, and Dean perched on the chair that had been Elizabeth’s. He grappled for a way to open conversation, but could think of nothing. They sat in silence for an awkward minute before Sam said, “I didn’t know.”

Dean’s eyebrows pinched together over his eyes. “Didn’t know what?”

“That it was real.”

Dean wondered if this was Sam’s restraint breaking. He hoped for it, as it would mean Sam was opening up, letting himself show what he was feeling.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” he said, not knowing what else to say but wanting to keep him talking.

Sam stared across the cemetery at the endless graves and well-tended tombstones. “You don’t have to be sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t yours either.” He didn’t know what had caused the fire, if it was the demon or a natural accident of some kind, but he knew it wasn’t Sam’s fault. 

“It was,” Sam said, turning lifeless eyes on him. “If I had known it was real, I could have stopped it. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

Dean gripped Sam’s arm, feeling the way his muscles bunched under his hand and twitched as if he was going to pull away. “It was _not_ your fault.”

“If only I’d believed it, I could have done something. She was all alone.”

Dean felt his heart began to race. This wasn’t making sense. There was something Sam wasn’t saying. Did he remember the fire after all? Had he seen something?

He licked his dry lips and swallowed hard. “What didn’t you believe, Sam?”

“My dreams.”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck and frowned in confusion. He didn’t understand what Sam was saying properly, but what he had said, what it spoke of his state of mind, worried him.

“What about your dreams?” he asked. “You can tell me, Sammy. Maybe I can help. Did something happen?”

Sam looked over his shoulder at the group that had gathered in the parking lot, Mary and Bobby among them. “Don’t tell them, okay,” he said dully.

“I won’t,” Dean said quickly. “But you have to tell _me._ What are you talking about, Sam? Is it a nightmare you had?”

Sam’s lips pressed together, and he shook his head. “We need to go.” He got to his feet and started to walk away.

He was going slow, and Dean was able to catch up to him easily. He touched Sam’s arm to stop him, to ask more, but Sam pulled free and walked on.

“Sammy…”

Sam stopped for a moment to look at him and said, “Don’t tell them,” again. 

“I don’t even know what I’m not telling them,” Dean said, frustration bleeding into his voice.

“Good,” Sam said. “It’s better that way.”

As they approached, Mary’s eyes found Dean’s, and she looked questioning. Dean hesitated, and then shook his head. Sam didn’t want him to tell, and he wasn’t even sure he could if he tried. All Sam had said was that he hadn’t know it was real, and something about a dream. He could have been talking about nightmares that came after the fire. Plus, Sam had asked him not to tell. He asked so little now, all he seemed to want from them was that they go home, so Dean thought he should honor this request for now.

He hated keeping secrets from his family as they were always honest with each other, but he argued that Mary and Bobby had kept secrets from them for years about what was really out there, the monsters. They had done that to protect them. Dean would keep this secret for the same reason. He would protect them from further worry, since nothing he could tell them would be helpful at this point anyway.

As he reached the Impala and Sam climbed into the front seat, stretching his legs with a wince and adjusting the chair slightly, Mary put her arms around Dean in what would look, to an outsider, like a comforting embrace and whispered, “Did he say anything?”

Dean held her a moment, and then pulled back. “No, nothing that matters.”

Mary sighed. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”

Dean climbed into the backseat, letting his mother take the wheel for the ride to the motel, and Mary got in the front. She started the engine and they joined the queue of cars that were waiting to get out of the lot. Dean gave Sam a quick glance and saw that he was staring down at his hands on his lap. For the first time in his life, Dean wished he had Missouri Mosely’s gift of mindreading. If he could just know what Sam was saying when he said nothing, he would feel better. As it was now, with Sam’s strange words still in his mind, Dean was confused and concerned.


	12. Chapter 12

**_Chapter Twelve_ **

Mary was driving in the Jeep behind Sam and Dean in the Impala. Sam had ridden with them each in turn over the journey home. It had taken them days, and it was late evening by the time they pulled into Bobby’s yard.

It had taken longer than usual for the drive, as Sam could only spend so long in the car before he paled with pain and they had to find a motel to stop for the night. He didn’t seem to care whether they stopped or not, and never told either of them when he was in pain. They had to watch for his tells, faster breaths and small winces, to prompt him to take painkillers.

Mary preferred it when he was in the Jeep with her as she could monitor him, though when he was with Dean, she always hoped that he would talk. He didn’t say much when he was with her. In fact, he said more to place an order for food when they stopped to eat than he did volunteering information to her when they were alone.

Though he was ordering the food, he wasn’t eating much of it, instead pushing it around his plate. The clothes Dean and Bobby had bought for him, though in his usual sizes, were starting to look loose. The time he’d spent unconscious and the lack of appetite now were making themselves known. Mary hoped when he was home, when he could rest his back and be in less pain, he would start to eat properly again.

Mary stopped between the Impala and Bobby’s Chevelle and climbed out. Dean unfolded himself easily from his seat, but Sam moved slowly, gripping the door to support himself. She knew he had his painkillers in his pocket, but she guessed he’d not taken them.

The back door opened, and Bobby walked onto the porch wearing his ‘kiss the cook’ apron that Sam and Dean had brought him as a Christmas gift the year before. Mary knew they’d bought it as a joke, never thinking he would wear it, but Bobby put it on defiantly each time he worked at the stove until it had stopped amusing them and became just another ordinary detail of their extraordinary lives.

“We’ve got meatballs,” he said in lieu of a conventional greeting, and then walked back inside.

Mary glanced at Dean, expecting a reaction to the announcement of one of Bobby’s specialities, but he was watching Sam with a tense brow. She thought it was more than just the obvious pain that Sam was feeling that made him look like that. He had been like this since they left the funeral. On the rare moments they had together without Sam, she had asked if he was okay, but he assured her he was fine and changed the subject. It was rare that Dean hid anything from her, so it was obvious that he was. She hoped it was just worry for Sam that he was trying to shield her from, because if it was something else, something about Sam, she needed to know.

They went inside, and Bobby gestured them to seats at the table where cold cans of coke were sweating at each place setting and a basket of bread was in the center of the table. They would usually drink beers with dinner, but with Sam on medication still, he needed to stay clear of alcohol. Mary was pleased that Bobby was trying to make it easier for him by having them all sticking to soda.

Dean and Sam sat down, Sam with a wince of pain, and Mary joined Bobby at the counter where he was putting spaghetti in bowls and adding generous portions of meatballs.

“Need help?” Mary asked.

“You can grab the parmesan from the fridge,” Bobby said.

Mary took out the cheese and a grater from the drawer, then carried them over to the table as Bobby set down bowls in front of Dean and Sam and said, “Soup’s on.”

Dean thanked him, and Sam mumbled inarticulately.

Bobby and Mary took their seats and, at a nod from Bobby, began to eat. Dean, Mary and Bobby ate hungrily, but Sam only took a few bites before toying with it instead.

“You should eat something, Sam,” Mary said gently.

Sam nodded and began to eat again.

She was glad that he was trying, and she gave him an encouraging smile which he acknowledged with a nod but didn’t return.

“How was the drive?” Bobby asked. 

When no one else volunteered an answer, Mary said, “It was good until we reached I-90. There had been a pileup there that stopped us for almost an hour. It looked pretty bad when we passed it.”

“That’s a shame,” Bobby said distractedly, his eyes on Dean, whom was staring at his bowl and studiously avoiding anyone’s eye. “You okay, Dean?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” Dean said, looking up and forcing a smile. “This is really good, Bobby.”

Sam set down his fork and pushed away his plate. “Excuse me,” he said quietly, getting to his feet.

“Sam,” Mary started, wanting to encourage him to eat more, but he shook his head and tucked his chair into the table.

“I’m going to bed,” he said in a flat, soft voice.

“Are you in pain?” Bobby asked.

“No, I took something,” he replied. “They make me tired.”

Without wishing any of them goodnight as he usually would—at least would have _before—_ he left the room and they heard his slow tread on the stairs.

“Did he take something?” Bobby asked Dean.

Dean shrugged. “Not when I was looking, but we stopped for gas in Mitchell, so I guess he could have taken something then.”

Bobby sighed. “I was hoping something would have changed by now, that he’d open up a little.”

Dean sighed. “It hasn’t.”

“And he said _nothing_ to you at the funeral?” Bobby pressed. 

Dean shook his head quickly, a little too quickly for it to be believable. “No. Nothing.”

Bobby pursed his lips.

“He’ll open up when he’s ready,” Mary said, hoping she was right. She had never been less sure of either of her sons than she was now.

Dean nodded. “Yeah.”

They fell into silence again, interspersed with the hiss of a can being opened and forks clinking against the bowls. When Mary had finished, she mopped her bowl with bread and thanked Bobby for the meal.

“Yeah, thanks,” Dean said.

Bobby smiled graciously and said, “I’ll clean up. Dean, why don’t you go check on your brother.”

Dean frowned but stood from his chair and walked from the room.

Bobby waited until his footsteps had disappeared and they could hear the creak of the upper floor in the old house before saying, “Okay, what’s going on with him?”

Mary needed no further prompting as she was as aware as he was that something was going on. “I don’t know,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “He’s been like that since the funeral, the entire drive here.”

“And he hasn’t told you anything?”

“No.”

“He’s hiding something,” Bobby stated. “And we need to know what it is.”

Mary sagged. “Do we though? Sam is already hurting, and I hate to think of causing him more pain by pushing. Do we need to upset Dean, too?”

“He’s already upset,” Bobby said. “I saw that as soon as he came in. And it’s more than what’s going on with Sam that’s doing it.”

“What do you think it is?” Mary asked, knowing Bobby sometimes had insight into her sons that she didn’t. He had a different relationship with them than her; he had the role of a surrogate father, and he could see them clearer sometimes where she was blinded by her need to protect and comfort them. 

Bobby rubbed his beard. “I’m willing to bet it’s something Sam said at the funeral. He was worried before then, that was obvious, but he was even more after that. Dean doesn’t hide things, does he?”

Mary shook her head. “Rarely, if ever.”

“Which is why it’s twisting him up to do it now. I don’t know what Sam said to him, but we need to know. If there was something, some clue about that fire, he has to tell us. We’re in the dark right now.”

“But Sam said he didn’t remember.”

“He did, and I don’t like to think of him lying to us, but he _is_ different now. He might be trying to protect us. He might not realize how important it is. I don’t think Dean would hide that from us, but he’s said something that’s got Dean worried. He would want to protect his brother more than being honest.” He got up and stretched, his back making a popping noise. “I’ll soak the dishes and do them in the morning. I’ve got to make a call. Hammond’s Chevy is ready, and I want him to pick it up tomorrow so I’ve got the second bay clear. I picked up a ’68 Shelby at an auction yesterday, and that’s in the first bay.”

“You found a Shelby?” Mary said, her eyes widening and worry momentarily banished as she thought of what that would mean for Dean—he had wanted to work on one for years.

“Yep. Its bodywork is a wreck, but the engine isn’t too bad. Dean and I can make something of it.”

Mary grinned. “He’ll like that.”

“He will,” Bobby said. “So let’s help him get whatever this is off his chest so he can enjoy it.”

Mary stood up and stacked the dishes as Bobby wandered into the library and picked up the landline phone from the many they had for their hunting covers. Mary and Dean mostly passed with their real identities as PIs, but there were a lot of hunters that played the part of feds and they sometimes needed Bobby to back up their stories.

She began to run water in the sink, thinking she’d do the dishes now to save the unpleasant task in the morning, but she had no more than half-filled it when Dean came in and picked up the dish towel. “Sam’s sleeping,” he said.

“That’s good.” She shut off the water and looked into her son’s tense eyes. “I need to talk to you,” she said gently.

Dean winced. “Figured you would.”

Mary plucked the cloth out of his hand and set it down on the counter. “Come sit down.”

Dean sighed and took his place at the table, toying with an empty coke can.

“What aren’t you telling us?” she asked. “Did Sam say something to you at the funeral?”

“He asked me not to say,” Dean said.

Mary touched his hand. “And I know you’ll want to keep the secret for him, but we have to know. It could be important.”

There was the sound of the phone being set down in the library and Bobby came in. He glanced at Mary and she gave him a small nod, his eyes looking concerned as he took the chair on the other side of Dean.

“What did he say to you?” he asked, then when Dean bit his lip and didn’t speak, said, “It’s never been more important that we’re honest with each than it is now, Dean.”

Mary looked away for a moment, a wave of guilt filling her. She wasn’t ever truly honest with any of them. She had been keeping the greatest of all secrets for twenty-two years.

Dean drew a deep breath. “He said he didn’t know it was real. I thought he meant that he was talking about Jess’ death, like he was finally letting his grief show, but I don’t think it was that. It was more like guilt. He was talking like it was his fault—the fire, I mean. He said if he’d known it was real, he could have stopped it, that he shouldn’t have left her alone.”

“That’s just survivors’ guilt thought, isn’t it?” She looked at Bobby, seeing his tight brow. “You said he would feel that.”

“I did,” Bobby said. “And it sounds like he does, but he told Dean he hadn’t known it was real. He could have stopped it. That sounds more like he knew it was going to happen, like there was some clue.”

Dean flinched and swallowed hard. “He said something about dreams. I figured he meant nightmares. Sam always did suffer with bad dreams when he was a kid. Maybe he dreamed about losing her and then, when it happened, it was like it came true. That would really do a number on him, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course it would,” Mary said.

She understood guilt as she had plenty of her own, even more so since Bobby had suggested that Sam could have been the target for the demon. She was the one that had allowed it entry into their house that night.

Dean rubbed at the back of his neck. “Sam said, ‘if only I’d believed it’.”

Bobby’s eyes widened. “That sounds like more than just nightmares.”

“But he doesn’t remember the fire,” Mary said. “I agree with Dean; it’s got to just be that he dreamed of losing her and then, when he did, he thought one of his dreams had come true.”

Bobby cleared his throat. “Or maybe he remembers more than he’s saying.”

Dean shook his head roughly. “No! Sam wouldn’t lie about that.”

Bobby held up a hand. “I don’t want to think it any more than you do, but the dreams he’s talking about, the fact he thinks he should have stopped it… I don’t know.” He fixed an intense gaze on Dean. “Did he say _anything_ else?”

“No, I swear,” Dean said. “He cut off and just said I shouldn’t tell you.” He fisted his hand under Mary’s. “And I’ve already screwed that up.”

“We needed to know. You did the right thing,” Mary soothed.

“We’ve got to talk to him,” Bobby said firmly. “I know neither of you want to push him or hurt him, I don’t either, but this is too important for us to ignore. If he does remember something, if he knows more than he’s told us, it could help us understand what happened that night. This could be about saving his life. We have to know.”

Mary’s chest ached at the thought of possibly causing her son more pain, but she knew Bobby was right. Saving Sam’s life was more important than protecting him from having to talk to them about something he wanted to hide.

“But he’s not ready,” Dean said. Though his words said otherwise, his tone was defeated. He knew they had to do it as much as they did.

“He isn’t,” Bobby agreed. “But we have to do it anyway. This could be his life.”

Dean rubbed a hand over his face roughly. “Okay. We’ll do it, I’ll help, but we’re doing it tomorrow. He’s sleeping now. Let him have a night of whatever peace he can get before we have to hurt him all over again.”

“Of course we’ll wait until morning, honey,” Mary said. “We’re no more eager to hurt him than you are.”

Bobby nodded curtly. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Okay,” Dean said, his voice steeped in misery. “I’m going to bed, too.”

He got up, touched Mary’s shoulder, said goodnight to her and Bobby, and then left the room.

Mary stood and went to the sink to start the dishes again. Her throat was swollen and her eyes prickled. She was dreading the next day when they would hurt Sam with their questions, but she was more worried about the answers. What if Sam _had_ seen something he didn’t want to tell them? He could have important clues that would help them determine if it was a normal fire or if there were signs of a demon she and Bobby would recognize. It could really be back. She had wanted to kill it since the day John died, but that was about revenge. Now she _needed_ to kill it to protect her family.

And she didn’t know where the weapon that could do that was. It was time to make finding it a priority.


	13. Chapter 13

**_Chapter Thirteen_ **

Dean and Bobby were deep in the engine of the Shelby, checking parts and commenting on the quality. That was the extent of their conversation, though.

Bobby had expected Dean to be excited when he saw the car, and he had been, but the tension of what they all knew was coming that morning seemed to have sapped some of the joy from it for him. It was a damn shame, Bobby thought, as he’d been hoping the car would give Dean something to do other than worry about his brother’s lack of emotional outpouring.

Bobby was worried, but he understood what Sam was doing better than Mary and Dean. When Karen had died, he had been consumed with grief and anger, but you wouldn’t have known it watching or talking to him. He had hidden it well. He’d learned at a young age that it was better to keep your feelings to yourself. His father had no time for weakness, and his mother was already overburdened. Bobby had managed to keep a lid on what he was feeling most of the time. It was on rare occasions that he let himself allow the disgust he felt watching his father to come to the fore, the most explosive time being the night he’d killed him.

He had stayed shut down for a long time, committing himself to learning about the real world from Rufus and saving other lives, until one day they’d taken a demon hunt. Bobby had known then what he hadn’t known when Karen had been possessed, and he’d been careful to protect the meatsuit, but the demon had suffered. Bobby had poured holy water down its throat and splashed it into the demon’s black eyes. When Rufus had finally stepped in and started the exorcism, Bobby had watched with pleasure as the demon writhed and growled, its suffering clear to them.

When the last of the black smoke had funnelled from the demon’s mouth, Bobby had rushed forward to untie the woman it had been possessing, not hearing Rufus’ voice calling to him. It wasn’t until he had eased the woman to the floor that he realized she was dead. He had looked at her closed eyes and parted lips, and her face had morphed into Karen’s. Rufus had been talking about how the demons usually trashed meat-suits as a matter of course and there was nothing they could have done, but Bobby barely heard him. He was looking into the face of his dead wife, and for the first time, he couldn’t hold back his grief. He had sobbed and moaned as the tears had coursed down his face, feeling his heart breaking as if it was a literal thing.

Rufus had left him alone, leaving the cabin they’d brought the demon to, and Bobby had mourned openly for what felt like hours. When Rufus came back, Bobby had a lid on it again, and he’d sworn he would never let that happen again. He would control himself.

He had done it for years, closing down the part of himself that allowed him to form bonds, and he had kept it closed until the day Mary Winchester first brought her sons to his house. Those boys had wormed their way into his heart, and he’d not been able to get them out. After a while, he stopped wanting to try.

He had kept his promise to himself to contain it all until he arrived in the Californian hospital where Sam lie in a bed, desperately ill. He had cried again then, really let himself feel, and it had taken the days between his arrival and Mary and Dean’s for him to fully get himself under control again so he could help them cope with what had happened.

And Sam was doing the same thing now, hiding what he felt, keeping it shuttered for them, and Bobby wished he wouldn’t. They all needed Sam to show what he felt so they could help him through it. The longer it went on, the longer he hid his pain from them, the worse it was going to be when he did break.

The door to the workshop opened and Mary stuck her head in. “Breakfast is ready,” she said. “And Sam’s down.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Dean said, and though he smiled at her, his eyes were tight with tension.

Bobby was sure that Dean was dreading admitting to Sam he’d broken his graveside promise of silence and that they were going to be pressing Sam for more now.

He went to the sink in the corner and squeezed Tough Nut onto his hands. He gave the bottle to Dean and then rubbed in the slick jelly onto his oily fingers and palms. Dean did the same, and they took it in turns to rinse at the faucet.

Bobby dried his hands on a cloth and tossed it to Dean before going out of the workshop and into the house. He unzipped his coat, hung it on the hook and then greeted Sam who was sitting at the table.

Sam murmured something in return and looked down at his folded hands.

Mary had set the table with syrups, a jug of juice, glasses and a platter of pancakes. She took the plates from the cupboard as Dean came in and shrugged off his coat, and smiled at him. Hers wasn’t a true smile either. They were all feeling the pressure.

Bobby sat and waited for Mary to hand him a plate and then join them all at the table before reaching for the pancakes and scooping them onto his plate with a fork. Dean and Mary took their own and then Sam, at Mary’s prompting, did the same.

It was, Bobby knew, Sam’s favorite breakfast, and Bobby guessed Mary had prepared it for him as something to please him before they had to push him to talk. Bobby thought it had been a waste of time, as Sam didn’t seem aware of what was in front of him as he cut small pieces and ate them dry, not even bothering to pour on the syrup.

“Bobby found a ’68 Shelby for us to restore, Sam,” Dean said with forced enthusiasm.

Sam nodded without looking up. “Cool.”

Dean shot Bobby an imploring look and said, “I think we should finish her in cherry red.”

Bobby knew what Dean needed, to show Sam something normal, so he huffed a laugh. “No chance, boy. That car is going to be satin silver, and she’s going to be beautiful.”

Sam didn’t even seem to have heard the exchange, and Bobby knew there was no point going on with the pretence. He shook his head at Dean and then began to eat.

For a while no one spoke apart from Mary to encourage Sam to take another pancake. Even when they had all finished eating, Sam’s plate only half cleared, it was quiet. Knowing someone had to get them started, and thinking it would probably be easier for him than Mary or Dean, Bobby cleared his throat and said, “There’s something we need to talk about, Sam.”

Sam looked up at him, his brow creased. “What?”

Bobby opened his mouth to answer, but Mary held up a hand to him and said, “No, I’ll do it.”

Bobby nodded and picked up his juice.

Mary seemed to struggle for the words at first, and then drew a deep breath and laid her hand on Sam’s arm. “Dean told us what you said at Jessica’s funeral,” she said gently.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” Dean said quickly, his guilt clear in his voice and downturned lips.

Sam shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“We need to know what you meant,” Mary went on. “All of it.”

Sam took a breath and seemed to consider where to start, how much to say to them. After a long pause, he said, “I lied,” in a toneless voice.

“What did you lie about?” Bobby asked, careful to keep his tone neutral.

Sam frowned slightly. “I told Brady I don’t remember the fire because I thought it would be easier. And when he told you, I didn’t correct him. I lied when you asked me about because I didn’t think it would matter.”

Bobby was surprised by the admission, as Sam was usually honest to a fault, but he was relieved, too. If he remembered, he might be able to tell them something about the fire that might help.

“It does matter though,” Bobby said. “We need to know everything.”

Sam nodded slightly and said, “I remember it all. I saw her die.”

Bobby held in a gasp with difficulty, but Dean didn’t manage it. His breath caught and he leaned back in his seat as if distancing himself from the admission.

Mary squeezed Sam’s hand and said in a choked voice, “I’m so sorry, honey.”

Like Bobby, she could understand how Sam felt having seen that. She had seen John die. She had never given Bobby details, just enough to know that it had a been a fire and the yellow-eyed demon, but she hadn’t been able to hide the pain of it when she’d told him the way she could when she was speaking to Sam and Dean.

Sam went on without acknowledging her comfort. He was stating facts as if reading from a script. He allowed no sign of the emotion he was feeling at the story to show. “We walked home from Scotty’s, and I left her at the door so I could go check on Brady. He wasn’t home, so I called him and left a message, then walked home. When I got in, I heard the shower running, so I figured she was cleaning up. I wanted to speak to you, since it was Dad’s anniversary, so I called, but you didn’t answer.”

“We had no signal,” Dean said apologetically. “We were deep in the forest. I’m sorry, Sammy.”

Bobby knew it was helping Dean to apologize, but it wasn’t going to help Sam. Now he had started to tell the story, he needed to keep going, so he shushed Dean and encouraged Sam on with a nod.

“Someone wanted me to think she was in the shower,” Sam said. “But I was leaving you a message when I sat down on the bed and the blood dripped down on me.”

Mary gasped, and Bobby looked at her, seeing the color had drained from her face and she was breathing fast. She looked horrified. She swallowed hard and said in a weak voice, “Blood?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. She was on the ceiling, bleeding from her stomach.”

Mary moaned as if in pain, and Dean touched her hand where it was gripping the edge of the table. Sam went on without looking at any of them. 

“There weren’t any ropes or anything, but she was pinned up there. She was awake, and there was blood on her nightgown. She was just looking at me. I tried to get her down, but I couldn’t reach, and then the fire started. It seemed to come from her and spread out over the ceiling and then the walls. There was nothing I could do.”

There was no note in his voice that told Bobby he was defending himself. He was just stating a fact.

“Of course there wasn’t,” Dean said, still holding his mother’s hand. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe that part wasn’t, but the fact I didn’t stop it was,” Sam stated. “I saw it happen before, see? I had the same dream over and over: Jess on the ceiling, the blood, the fire. It was exactly the same. That night, I thought I was dreaming again, but I didn’t wake up.”

Bobby felt a wave of horror. It wasn’t enough that Sam had witnessed it once, he had seen it many times in his dreams. And it had come true. The possible consequences of that and what it could mean for Sam stole Bobby’s breath, and he had to focus on inhaling and exhaling for a moment.

Sam could be psychic. Bobby knew a few, and one of them, Pamela Barnes, was a friend, but they weren’t always trusted by other hunters that saw evil in the supernatural and nothing else. If it was true, if Sam was psychic, it could have far reaching consequences for him, even without what other people would think. This could change Sam’s whole life.

“You dreamed it?” he asked, unable to keep the stress from his voice entirely.

Sam didn’t seem to notice it. He just nodded and said, “Yeah, for weeks before it happened. I’ve dreamed about fire for as long as I can remember, but it was always Dad in it. I would see him burn all the time. But this time it was Jess.”

Mary looked sickened, and Bobby guessed she was also feeling the weight of Sam’s potential and the fact this was something they’d never known about him. Sam had nightmares, that they all knew, but never that he’d dreamed of John’s death.

Bobby rubbed a hand over his face and forced himself to focus on the fact of what they needed to know. “Did you see anyone else, Sam? This is important. Was anyone else there? Did you hear anything that made you think you weren’t alone?”

“No,” Sam said, and Bobby didn’t doubt his honesty now. “But there had to have been someone, right?”

Bobby nodded, but it was Mary that answered, her voice weak. “There _was_ someone there. It was the demon. It was the same.”

All eyes snapped to her, but it was only Bobby and Dean that were showing the shock they felt. Sam showed nothing at all.

“The same as what?” Dean asked, his brow furrowed and his eyes wary.

Mary looked from Dean to Sam, her expression almost guilty and her eyes wet with the tears that pooled. “The same as your father. He was bleeding on the ceiling, too. The fire started with him and spread over the room. The blood was dripping into your crib, Sam. He was awake, too.”

Dean rubbed his face with both hands as if wanting to hide himself but not wanting to show weakness. “Dad died like _that!”_ he said, his voice wrecked.

Mary choked on a sob and said, “I’m so sorry. I never wanted you to know. Neither of you.”

She leaned toward Dean and stroked the back of his neck. Dean dropped his hands down onto the table, and Bobby saw the tears on his cheeks. In comparison, Sam looked neutral, as if the truth of his father’s awful end hadn’t sunk in. 

“How do you know it was the demon?” Sam asked.

Bobby was interested in the answer, too. He’d never doubted Mary when she said a yellow-eyed demon had killed her husband, but he’d never asked how she knew.

For a moment it looked like she wouldn’t answer, some internal battle seemed to be waging in her, but then she looked down at the table top and said, “I saw his eyes. When I got into your nursery, Sam, he was still there. It was only for a second before he disappeared, but I remember his yellow eyes.” She drew a shaky breath. “I need to ask you something, Sam, and I need you to think hard and be honest. Can you to that for me? It’s very important.”

Sam nodded, his expression only mildly interested.

“Did anyone ever make you a promise?”

Sam frowned. “Hundreds of people. We make promises all the time.”

“No, I mean a special promise. Maybe there was something you wanted, something big, and someone told you they could do it for you. It would have been about ten years ago. You would have been twelve. Think as hard as you can.”

Bobby’s eyes widened. Mary was talking about demon deals. Why would Sam have made a deal? He’d been a kid. What could he want at that age that a demon would deliver on? Sam had never seemed to want much of anything growing up. He’d been an easily satisfied kid. If there had been something he was willing to sell his soul for, especially that young, they would have known.

“No,” Sam said confidently. “There was never anything like that.”

“What does a promise have to do with anything?” Dean asked.

Mary flinched, but appeared to force herself to answer. “There are some demons that can make deals, grant wishes. They’re usually crossroads demons, and they have red eyes, but other demons can make deals if they’re powerful enough. It comes at a cost though. Ten years later they come for you.”

“For your soul,” Bobby added.

Dean was pale. “Your soul?”

Mary seemed unable to speak, but Dean needed more, so Bobby answered. “They take it to hell. You make a deal, and ten years later they come and take your soul to Hell.”

He thought that revelation was already bad enough that they didn’t need to know about the hellhounds being the ones that came. Though Sam showed no reaction, Dean looked sick.

“I didn’t do that,” Sam said firmly.

“Did Dad?” Dean asked, his eyes widening with horror. “Is that why he died?”

“No, I promise,” Mary said soothingly, cupping his cheek in her hand and stroking it with her thumb. “I would have known. Your dad was too smart to do something like that. He wouldn’t have been tricked.”

Dean frowned. “Then why did you ask Sam?”

“I had to be sure,” Mary said. “The yellow-eyed demon had a history of making deals. I found that out when I was hunting him before he disappeared. No one made a deal, I promise.”

Dean’s eyes were still wide with fear. “So he’s not in Hell?”

“No!” Mary said, sounding horrified. “Your dad and Jess are in Heaven. They did nothing to go to hell for.”

Dean sighed out a deep breath, “Okay. Yeah.”

Mary looked at Sam and then leaned toward him and stroked his cheek. “Jess is in Heaven, Sam.”

Bobby watched Sam, wondering if this was going to get a reaction, but his smile was clearly forced as he looked at his mother and said, “I know. Thanks, Mom.”

“This is no one’s fault but the demon’s,” Bobby said firmly, knowing they all needed to hear it. They were all drained by the conversation and Sam’s revelation.

“Are we done?” Sam asked, getting to his feet. “I need to go for a walk.”

“We’re done,” Mary said, seeming surprised by Sam’s curt question. “But is that a good idea? Your chest, your back…”

“They said I should exercise,” Sam said. “I won’t go far.”

He didn’t wait for anyone to answer before grabbing his coat from the hook and walking outside, a gust of cold air rushing in at them before the door closed.

Mary ran her hands over her tear-streaked face. “He saw it.”

“More than once,” Bobby said pointedly.

“What does that mean though?” Dean asked. “Is he some kind of psychic now?”

“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “It’ll take more than one dream to show that.”

Dean looked relieved. “Okay. Good.”

Mary wiped at her eyes and stood up as she said, “I’ve got a few things to do. I’ll be right back.”

She walked hurriedly out of the room and up the stairs, and Bobby knew she needed some space to let go of the tight hold she had on the emotions she was trying to conceal for Dean’s sake.

“Come on, Dean,” Bobby said. “Back to the shop. I want to get to work on the body.”

“Sure, okay,” Dean said.

They grabbed their coats and zipped them up before going out.

There was no sign of Sam, but Bobby thought that was probably a good thing. He might not be showing what he felt, but he was still feeling it, and he needed some space after what he’d had to tell them.


	14. Chapter 14

**_Chapter Fourteen_ **

Dean was sitting on the old swivel chair, bundled against the cold in his coat, inside the first service bay in Bobby’s vast workshop.

The chair was comfortable, despite the missing wheels and stuffing seeping out of the cushioned seat, and it was a part of Dean’s childhood. For as long as he could remember, it had been out there. He used to sit on it and watch Bobby work on the cars when he was too small to see inside the engine properly. As he’d grown, he’d started to pay real attention to what Bobby was doing, learning the trade from him until, at fourteen, he knew his way around an engine well enough to take it apart and put it back together again. He’d had a passion for it, and if he hadn’t become a hunter, he knew he would have been a mechanic. He still did some, helping Bobby out when the older man needed it, but his real talent was for the bodywork. He loved to see the shell of an old car becoming a thing of beauty again.

Bobby was doing the bodywork now, though, sanding the small pits of rust from the fender with the noisy grinder. Dean knew it should be him doing it, but he was sure if he’d tried, he would have sanded right though the metal and trashed the car completely. His head wasn’t in it. He was consumed with what he’d heard from Sam, Mary and Bobby.

He’d never imagined his father’s death had been so horrendous. He’d not envisioned a pleasant end from fire that had destroyed John’s body to the point that there was nothing left to bury, but when he was old enough to understand it properly, he’d hoped the smoke would have taken him before the fire could reach him. But the fire had come _from_ him, not around him, and he would have felt every moment of it.

He swallowed down bile.

John must have suffered so much. And his mother had seen it happen. She’d never even given a hint of it before, but it must have been horrific for her to see the man she loved die like that. Her nightmares must have been awful, probably still were, but she hadn’t burdened him or Sam with it once.

Dean had clear memories of that night, but he’d been spared the worst of it. He remembered hearing Mary screaming, and he’d gotten out of his bed and gone into the hall where she had met him, cradling Sam against her chest. She’d put Sam in his arms and instructed him to take Sam out of the house and to not look back. Dean had been scared; the smoke had billowed out of the nursery, clouding above his head, and he could hear the fire. He recalls being terrified that he was going to drop Sam. He’d only ever been able to hold him when he was sitting in a chair before that, Sam’s weight taken by a pillow on Dean’s lap.

He had clutched Sam tightly and went carefully down the stairs as quickly as he could. He’d struggled with the door, trying to hold Sam at the same time, and when he’d gotten it open by balancing Sam on his knee, he’d hurried outside. He had stopped and turned back to see the fire at the window of Sam’s nursery. He had been waiting for his mother and father to come out, too, and Mary had appeared and grabbed him up, Sam still held against his chest, and carried them away from the house as the windows above blew out and fire licked at the walls.

He remembered talking for the first time when she set him down again, the cold grass tickling his bare feet and his heart racing. It had been a question born of confusion, not concern, as he didn’t understand the truth of what happened that night despite his kindergarten fire drills and the warnings about not playing with lighters or matches. His teacher hadn’t really explained the danger to the children in her care, so Dean had just known it was scary.

He’d asked, “Where’s Daddy?” and Mary’s answer had been spoken in a choked voice.

“He’s still inside.”

Dean didn’t understand then what it meant that his father hadn’t come out. He had stared at the door, waiting for his father to appear, not understanding why he wasn’t coming out to be with them. He had no idea that he was never going to see his father again, that the last time he would ever speak to him was when his father had tucked him into bed and promised that he would play outside with Dean the next day if he was good and went right to sleep.

Things had been confusing after that. They’d gone to stay with Uncle Mike from the garage and his wife, Aunt Kate. Mary seemed to be busy all the time for the first week, taking care of Sam and going out to meet people. He knew now that she had been dealing with the necessary official details that followed the fire. Dean had tried to take care of Sam for her, but he’d been fussy all the time, and even Mary had struggled to settle him.

Despite that, Mary had been strong for them. Dean guessed now that she’d saved her grief for when she was alone, but Dean only remembered her crying in front of him a handful of times. Her sadness had been more of an aura around her that even she couldn’t hide. She had taken care of them first.

Dean had been feeling his own sadness. Young as he was, he couldn’t grasp what Mary was saying when she told him his father had died and that meant he was in Heaven and couldn’t come back. It’d taken time for him to accept that Heaven really meant gone forever, that he would never see his father again.

Mary had been so strong, and that amazed Dean even more now that he knew what she had seen that night.

Sam was strong, too; he wasn’t showing them how he felt. Dean wasn’t sure if that was for their benefit or his own, but he wished Sam would let go, show his grief, and let them help. He wanted his brother back—not the empty stranger that had taken his place. He would even be happy to see Sam cry, as that was something he could help with. He could comfort him. Sam didn’t seem to need anything from any of them now.

No, that wasn’t true. He wanted to be left alone.

Sam had left them in the kitchen almost an hour ago, and there had been no sign of him coming back yet. Dean was sure he wasn’t still walking, as his back would cripple him with pain long before now if he’d tried. He guessed Sam had found one of the junkers that still had working doors and seats to hide in. It was too cold, really, and he should take better care of his chest than that, but he didn’t want to go looking for him either. He had to let Sam make his own decisions and choices. He was the one that knew what he could handle best. 

The fact Sam had seen Jessica’s death before it had happened worried Dean. Was it possible he was some kind of psychic like Missouri? Her gift had always been present and part of Dean’s life as long as he’d known her, and it had seemed natural, but Sam had never shown any sign of ability before, so it came as more of a shock. How was Sam going to handle it if he was, and if he saw more? This was huge, and it would be a hell of an adjustment for Sam to cope with on top of everything else that was happening—Jessica’s death, Sam’s still healing injuries, how close he had come to dying himself, and the return of the yellow-eyed demon—so much so that Dean worried it might break his brother.

The fact the demon was back was as equally pressing as Sam’s situation. He had killed John and Jessica, and Sam was the common denominator between them. Was he really in danger? They had to find a way to protect him, and the only way Dean could see to do that was by stopping the demon before it could come.

He needed to know more, everything Mary and Bobby knew, so that he could play his part. He understood their desire to protect him and Sam by not telling them everything about demons, even if he didn’t like it, but the time for that had passed. They had to be prepared. 

Bobby switched off the grinder and removed his protective goggles. He set them down on the roof of the Shelby and said, “Even with this thing going, I can hear you thinking. Are you okay?”

Dean raised an eyebrow, wondering on what planet he was supposed to be okay after what he’d just heard.

“Sorry,” Bobby said. “Stupid question.”

“Just a little,” Dean agreed.

Bobby unplugged the grinder and put it down in its case, then leaned against the hood of the car. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Feels like I’m thinking everything at once, spinning in circles,” Dean said. “Dad, Mom, Jess, Sam, the demon… I don’t even know where to grab hold to start fixing this. I have to know more.”

“I get that, but I don’t think there’s anything else to know. Your mom and Sam told us everything they know.”

“I know,” Dean said quickly. “I mean, I need to know about the demon—all demons. I need to know how to protect Sam, and he needs to know how to protect himself, too. We’re both clueless right now.”

Bobby nodded slowly. “You’re right. We can teach you everything we know, which is all anyone knows. I’ve studied demons ever since Karen died, and your mom has studied them since she was hunting with her parents. She hasn’t dealt with one in years, but I have. There’s a lot we can teach you both. We didn’t lie before; they are dangerous, and holy water won’t stop them for long, but there are ways to protect against them and trap them for an exorcism. I’ve even got one of them traps in the library.”

Dean frowned. “You’ve got a trap?”

“It’s not a physical trap exactly, not like a bear trap,” Bobby said. “But that symbol I’ve got on the library ceiling, it’s more than decorative. It’s called a Key of Solomon. Get a demon in or under one of them, and they can’t escape.” He raked a hand over his face and said, “Let’s find your brother and we’ll get started.”

Dean got up from his chair and followed Bobby to the small door set into the larger sliding door they opened to drive the cars in and out of the workshop. He flicked off the lights and stepped into the cold November air outside.

“I’ll see if he’s in already,” Bobby said, walking to the house and going in. He said something to Mary, and Dean heard her muffled response. Bobby peered out again and raised his arms at his sides. “He’s still out.”

“I’ll get him,” Dean said.

He set off along the first line of junkers, peering through windshields for a sign of his brother. He started calling Sam’s name, having no expectation that Sam would answer, but he was halfway down the second row when he heard his name being spoken.

He walked toward the voice and saw Sam getting awkwardly out of an old Plymouth. His cheeks were red with cold, and when Dean got close he saw Sam’s breaths were coming quick. Dean touched his hand and winced. “You’re freezing, Sam,” he said, a note of accusation in his voice.

Sam shrugged. “I didn’t notice.”

There was a wheeze in his chest, and Dean knew he’d been wrong when he’d assured himself that Sam would take care of himself and know his limits.

“We need to get inside,” he said, concerned now by the harm Sam might have done to himself sitting out in the cold.

Without a word, Sam walked toward the house and Dean hurried after him.

“Bobby’s going to tell us about demons,” he said, expecting some reaction, but Sam just nodded.

Sam got into the house first, slipping off his jacket and hanging it on the peg.

“You’ve been outside all this time?” Mary asked, her hands cupping Sam’s cheeks with a wince. “You’re like ice. Listen to your chest.”

“I’ll turn up the heat,” Bobby said.

“I’m fine,” Sam lied, moving away from Mary’s touch and walking into the library.

Dean hung up his own coat and shot Mary an apologetic smile as the creak of the furnace cranking up made the radiators judder.

“Go get changed,” Mary instructed Sam. “Your clothes are freezing, too. Get one of the hoodies we got you on.”

Dean expected Sam to ignore her, but he sighed and walked into the hall, the stairs creaking as he ascended them.

Mary sighed. “Keep an eye on him, you two.”

“You know we will,” Dean said. “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do for him when he’s like this.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “I’m going to get us started with some stuff for the demon, though. I’m going to The Roadhouse to speak to Ash. I want him to set up something to look for demon signs.”

“Like sulfur?” Dean asked, confused. How were they supposed to use Ash to look for a sign like that?

“There are other signs,” Bobby said, rooting in a drawer for something. He straightened with a heavy book in his arms that said _Daemon Dierum_ on the spine. “We’ll get to them when your brother is here.” He carried the book into the kitchen and thumped it down on the table. “There’s a lot you need to learn, signs included.”

“Okay,” Dean said.

Mary put on her coat and zipped it. “I’ll be back late. Tomorrow, I’ll help you with this.”

“There’s more to learn than we’re going to get through in a day?” Dean asked, eyeing the large and dusty book. He wasn’t a fan of research—though he knew its importance and took his turn with it—but this time he was eager to get in that book and start leaning.

“Afraid so,” Mary said. “And you didn’t take Latin, so it’s going to take a while.” She kissed his cheek and glanced up at the ceiling where they could hear Sam moving around upstairs. “Say goodbye to him for me.”

“Sure,” Dean said, forcing himself to sound relaxed, as if Sam was even going to acknowledge Mary’s goodbye, as if he’d show he cared whether she was there or not. 

She smiled sadly, which told Dean she knew just as well as he did that a goodbye would be meaningless to Sam, and then walked outside. After a moment, Dean heard the sound of the Jeep’s engine starting.

“Put the coffee on,” Bobby said. “We’re going to need it.”

Dean went to the counter and filled the jug with water, watching the Jeep drive away from the house. He was getting what he wanted, he was going to be taught how to protect his family, but he still felt a sense of foreboding that he couldn’t shake. He thought Sam needed these lessons more than any of them—if he really was the target—but he didn’t know how much Sam was going to take in, or if he’d even care about what they were doing.

He hoped that this might be what Sam needed, though. He always loved to learn, and something important might engage his interest finally. This could be what made him start to come back to them.


	15. Chapter 15

**_Chapter Fifteen_ **

Mary had just pulled the Jeep up outside The Roadhouse, between Kubrick’s RV and Gordon’s El Camino, when her phone rang. She turned off the engine and picked it up from the seat beside her where she had left it, wanting it close in case Bobby or Dean called—she had no expectations that Sam would call. She saw the number for the Sioux Falls PD flash on the screen, and relaxed slightly. Jody might be calling about an emergency, but at least it wouldn’t be one that included her sons.

She answered professionally, just in case one of Jody’s deputies were calling. “Mary Winchester.”

_“Hey, Mary, it’s Jody.”_

Mary settled in her seat, relaxing at the friendly sound of Jody’s voice. “Hey, Jody. How’s it going?”

_“Not bad. You?”_

“Not great,” Mary admitted. “We’ve had some family drama lately. What do you need?”

_“I had a case you might be interested in, but I can pass it on to someone else if you’re busy.”_

“Probably a good idea,” Mary said. “Me and Dean have a lot going on. What’s the case?”

She needed to know so she could judge whether to recommend another PI or a hunter for the job. Jody knew that Mary and Dean were good with unique cases, and she had some idea of what was out there in the real world, but Dean and Mary operated a ‘don’t ask-don’t tell’ policy with Jody. She helped them out with anything that came on her radar that might be one of their ‘weird’ cases, and often paved the way with law enforcement in other states by recommending their services as they’d worked with her before, but she never asked for more information than they wanted to give her. She and Bobby agreed early on, when Jody took over the post of sheriff from Edgar Woodall who _had_ known about the supernatural, they would let her lead the way on how much they told her about the real world.

_“It’s a missing person, but there’s nothing that tips me off that it’s your kind of thing. College burnout, I’m guessing. Kid was a senior at Augustana. We’re looking into it, but the family has money and wants to spread it around to find their daughter faster.”_

“Pass it to Henderson,” she said. “He’s good with the missing person ones.”

“Man’s a bloodhound,” Jody said with a laugh. “I’ll give him a call. Was throwing it your way in case you wanted the fee. Family like this, it’s going to be a good one.”

Mary needed to take some time to look into finances, as they hadn’t received the bill from Sam’s hospital stay yet, and she wasn’t sure how much of it their insurance was going to cover. And there was the stuff they needed to get for Sam. He had the essentials that Dean and Bobby had brought for him when he was in the hospital, and Mary had topped that up when she brought him his suit for the funeral, but he needed more clothes, a laptop and better phone.

They should be okay financially with the income they had from Bobby’s, and the Lawrence garage, too. If things got tight, as they might since she and Dean wouldn’t be able to take paid cases for a while if they were searching for the demon, she would sell out to Mike. He’d wanted to own the garage outright for years. Mary had kept it, as it had been John’s, and brought in good revenue, but money was nothing compared to her sons’ safeties, and John would have understood.

“We can manage without,” Mary said. “We’ve got more important things to get on with.”

 _“You want to talk about it?”_ Jody offered. 

“Some other time. I’ll buy you a beer and tell you all about it.”

_“I’ll hold you to that. Take care of yourself and your boys. Call if there’s anything I can do.”_

“I will,” Mary said. “Thanks, Jody.”

They exchanged goodbyes, then Mary ended the call and tucked the phone into her pocket. She climbed out and locked the door, and checked the back was secure. 

She didn’t want to think another hunter would steal from her, but she knew her store of lore books and weapons was the envy of many. In the backseat she had boxes of books she’d taken from her lockup in Omaha on the way to The Roadhouse. It was some of the journals her father—and his family before him—had kept and inherited from other hunters. She had gathered them to start to scour for signs of the Colt, and the books of demonology she hadn’t looked at since shortly after John died to study. When Sam and Dean were old enough to be curious about the books she and Bobby would rather they didn’t read—the ones that were forbidden to them and therefore more tempting—she had brought the demonology texts to her Nebraska storage unit. She had a few units dotted around the country with weapons and sundries, just in case she and Dean or another hunter needed them.

She had the books now, though, and for the first time, her sons were going to be able to read them. She knew that the better educated they were, the better they would be able to protect themselves. That didn’t mean she liked it. She hated it. She had spent twenty-two years trying to shield them from demons and the lore about them, and now she was arming them with the information to hunt one. Dean was going to want to, she knew, and Sam might, too. As much as she wanted to shield them, she knew they were going to be a part of it when she finally found the Colt and took the fight to the yellow-eyed demon.

She walked across the mud and gravel parking lot to the bar. She pushed open the door and was met with the sounds of voices, laughter and music. It was a good sound, and reminded her of better days: beers with John in the Brew and Cue in Lawrence, and then evenings here, drinking a beer with Ellen and Bill when the boys were young, while Sam played with Jo in the back and Dean drifted between them and Mary, wanting to be too old to play with the children but not to miss out on the fun.

Ellen was working the taps, handing beers to a pair of hunters that were waiting with their bills held out and talking animatedly. Bill was nowhere in sight, but Jo was playing pool with a man that looked as though he’d stumbled across the place by accident on his way to a frat party. Mary was sure he wasn’t there with Jo by her invitation, as she kept her college life separate to the hunting world, not wanting to be seen as the freak that lived in a bar where grumpy men and women sharpened knives at the tables and talked monsters. 

Ellen caught sight of Mary as she approached and smiled welcomingly. “Hey, Mary. Beer?”

“Please. And to talk if you’ve got a minute.”

Ellen took in her serious expression and nodded. “I’ll get Bill.” She handed across a beer and then ducked around the side of the bar, pulling Jo aside and saying something, before disappearing into the back.

Jo set down her cue with a disgruntled expression and walked around the bar to where Creedy was tapping his wallet on the counter, looking impatient. Jo shot Mary a smile as she served him, and then, when she’d stowed his bills in the register, came to Mary and said, “Hey. Where’s Dean?”

Mary knew Jo was going to miss having a chance to speak to her friend, so she said, “He’s home right now,” regretfully and sipped her beer. “How’s college going?”

Jo shrugged her shoulders. “It’s okay. Will be even better when it’s over. Just under two years to go, and I’ll be free to do what I want.”

“You’re not having second thoughts about hunting?” Mary asked, pushing herself to sound interested when her thoughts were back in Sioux Falls with her boys.

“Nope,” Jo said confidently. “I know what I want. I wish Mom and Dad would give me the same freedom you give Sam and Dean. They only had to finish school.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve got to get through _college_.”

“They want what’s best for you,” Mary said.

Jo sighed. “I know, I know. I’ll be done soon, though. Then it will be _my_ choice.” She brightened. “Talking about college, how’s Sam doing with his final year? Is he going crazy with the pressure?”

Mary bit her lip, unsure of how much to say about Sam and what had happened. She could tell Jo about the fire and how Jessica had died, but she would have questions, and Mary didn’t want to talk about the demon’s connection.

She was saved from answering by Bill and Ellen, who approached and transferred Jo’s attention to them.

“Am I going to have to be doing this long?” Jo asked her father. “I left a stupidly wealthy frat guy at the pool table with a wallet that’s dying to be scammed and a high opinion of his skills.”

“You can catch him next time,” Bill said. “Do you want to come through to the back, Mary?”

Mary nodded and followed him along the bar to the door into the private areas of the bar. They went into the small kitchen and sat down at the table. Bill laid a hand on her shoulder for a moment and asked, “What’s happened?”

Mary was trying to corral her thoughts to explain when Ellen came in and set a bottle of whiskey and three glasses on the table. “You look like you need this,” she explained, sitting down beside Mary.

“I’ll stick with beer, thanks,” Mary said. “I want to drive home tonight.”

Bill poured two glasses of amber whiskey, passed one to his wife, then sat down on Mary’s other side and said, “Now, what’s happened?”

Mary took a breath and sighed it out in a rush. “There was a fire at Sam’s apartment. His girlfriend, Jessica, was killed, and he wound up in the hospital.”

“Oh no!” Ellen put a hand to her mouth. “Poor Sam. Is he okay now?” She shook her head. “Obviously he’s not okay, he lost his girlfriend, but physically?”

“He’s doing much better. He was in the ICU for a while, but he’s out of the hospital now, and we’re back home.”

“Thank god,” Ellen said quietly.

“There’s more though,” Bill stated. 

Mary nodded. “Yeah. We think it was the same demon that killed John that killed Jessica. There were close similarities for both.” She shook her head. “No. They weren’t similarities. It was exactly the same. He’s back.”

She had never told Ellen and Bill the details of John’s death. They just knew, like almost everyone else, that John had been killed by a yellow-eyed demon. She had never told anyone at all about her deal or that she’d seen the demon before that awful day. Only Sam, Dean and Bobby knew how John had died, and telling the story once had been hard enough. There was no reason to tell Ellen or Bill the details. It wouldn’t help her find the demon or the Colt. 

“What can we do to help?” Ellen asked.

“I need the Colt,” Mary said. “You have to help me find it.”

Ellen looked at Bill, and he cleared his throat. “Mary, none of us have ever seen anything that comes close to proving it’s real, let along the gun itself. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for it.”

“But there are rumors,” Mary pointed out. “I’m going to look for clues in the old journals my parents had and the ones Bobby inherited, but we need to know what the living know, too. I need to know what the rumors are.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Ellen said. “They’re rumors. They might be true, it’s happened, but they might just be hunters shooting their mouths off. We’d all like to believe there was something out there that could kill anything, to tip the scales in our favor in this fight.”

“I need you to ask around,” Mary said. “You know who we can trust to help with this. I don’t want Walker and his cronies being tipped off and getting it before I can. Ask the old faces what they know. I’m going to do what I can, but I don’t have time to track them all down and ask.”

“We’ll do that, of course,” Bill said. “But do you think it’s a good idea to focus on exorcisms, too? Maybe if you can trap it and send it back to Hell…”

“It’s not enough,” Mary insisted, interrupting him before he could finish. “If I’m right and it was exorcised when it disappeared after John, it only lasted twenty-two years. It needs to be stopped for good if I’m going to…” She stopped herself and shook her head.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Bill asked.

Mary gave herself a moment by taking a draw on her beer, and then, deciding to be honest about that part at least, said, “I think it came for Sam, not Jess or John. It was him that connected them both. I don’t know why it didn’t kill him when it had a chance; he was a defenceless baby the first time, and basically defenceless against it as an adult, too, but it might come back for him.”

Bill rubbed the back of his neck. “What if it’s not Sam’s life that it wants? What if it’s something else?”

Mary felt her heart skip a beat. She hadn’t considered that. It was better than it coming to kill Sam, but it was still bad. If Sam had something the demon wanted, it meant he _was_ still coming back. And if Sam didn’t give it, whatever it was the demon wanted, the demon might kill him then.

“What else would it want?” Ellen asked him. “Sam’s just a college kid.”

The color drained from Mary’s face as she realized there might be something that made Sam more than a college kid. He’d had that dream that came true. She had been studiously not thinking about that part of it, not wanting to address what it could mean for Sam if he was psychic, but now she was forced to. What would the demon want a psychic for? And why Sam? How could it have known, ten years before Sam was even born, that he might have that ability?

But there was nothing else that made him stand out from any other kids of a hunting family. He was no different to Jo—apart from the fact of John’s death at the demon’s hands.

“What’s wrong, Mary?” Ellen asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

Mary shook her head. “Nothing. I’m just worried about him. And I skipped dinner,” she added, not wanting to voice her concerns to them. “It’s been a crazy two weeks.”

“I bet,” Ellen said. “I’ll get you something to eat. We’ve got lasagne in the fridge. How does that sound?” 

Mary forced a smile. “That sounds great. Is Ash around? I need to talk to him, too.”

“He’s working on something in his room,” Bill said. “I’ll get him for you,”

Ellen and Bill stood, Bill leaving the room and Ellen going to the fridge to take out a Tupperware of lasagne. She put it on a plate and then set it to warming in the microwave.

“It’s going to be okay, Mary,” she said bracingly. “We will ask around for you. If there’s a hunter that comes through here that knows anything about it, we’ll find out.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “I appreciate this.”

“I know you’d do the same for us if we needed it,” Ellen said confidently. “Here he is.”

Bill led Ash back into the room, and Ash fell into a chair beside Mary and took a drink of the beer he’d brought in with him. “What can I do for ya?” he drawled.

“I need you to come up with something, a program, that can track a demon—a powerful one,” Mary said. “You know the omens they create?”

Ash nodded. “Storms, crop failures, dead cattle, yeah.” He scratched his chin. “I can do that. You want me to set it up here, or do you need it for yourself?”

“Both,” Mary said. “The more people looking, the better. Put it on a drive for me, and I’ll get it going on my laptop. How long do you think it will take?”

Ash considered for a moment, taking another draw on his beer. “Fifty-one hours.”

“I can’t stay that long,” Mary said. “I need to get home. Can you send it to me?”

“Sure, I’ll package it as an installation file and email it to you. I’ll send instructions, too.”

“Thank you, Ash,” Mary said fervently. “I’ll fix you a PBR tab for this.”

Ash grinned. “Thanks, Mary. Why are you looking for a demon anyway? I didn’t think they were your thing.”

“They are now,” Mary said darkly.

The microwave beeped, and Ellen took out the plate and set it down in front of Mary. “Eat,” she encouraged as Bill passed her a knife and fork.

“Ash, you better get to work,” Bill said pointedly.

Ash sighed heavily as he got up from his chair. “Sure thing, boss. I’ll call you when it’s done and I’ve sent it, Mary,” he said, then strolled out of the room.

Mary began to eat as Ellen said, “I better let Jo get back to her game. Say goodbye before you go.”

“I will,” Mary said.

Ellen left, and Bill took up his place at the table again. “You’re looking for the demon,” he said seriously.

“I am,” Mary agreed. “But I’m not hunting it yet. I just want to know where it is.”

She needed to know if it was anywhere near Sam so she could get him away. She couldn’t attack until she had the Colt, but she could defend.

“Good,” Bill said. “You don’t want to go after it half-cocked.”

“I won’t,” Mary promised. “When I face it, it will be to kill it.”

She would find the Colt and then kill the demon. She would make the world safe for her son again. It would be to avenge John, too, but her priority was to save Sam. With the demon out there, perhaps coming for him, she had to protect both her sons. Sam might be the target, but Dean was the one that would do anything for him, even at the risk of his own safety. If the demon came, Dean would step in front of Sam without thought, and that would put both at risk.

She had to do this for her sons.


	16. Chapter 16

**_Chapter Sixteen_ **

Bobby sat on the edge of the bed and tugged his boots toward him, then pulled them on. He bent to tie the laces and ran over what he had to do that day in his mind.

He’d spent most of the previous day with Sam and Dean, going over basic demon lore and teaching them as much as he could. They had both been attentive and had taken in what he was telling them, even taking notes. They’d covered hindering demons with traps, holy water, salt, iron, and today Bobby planned to start them on exorcisms.

He’d been most surprised by Sam. He’d expected to need to persuade him to pay attention, to have to explain the real risk of the demon, but Sam had accepted the explanation that they were going to study almost straight away, and he’d taken it as seriously as Dean who was a man on a mission. Sam showed none of the same intensity, but he had been engaged.

He tied the last lace and got to his feet, tucking the bedclothes straight before going out of the room and down the stairs. As he passed Sam and Dean’s room, he heard voluble snores, and knew one of them—if not both—was still sleeping.

Sam and Dean had shared that room since the first night they’d spent at Bobby’s house. When it had become their home, Bobby had offered to clear one of the many other rooms in the large farmhouse for them so they could have their own space, but neither had seemed bothered. They liked to be together. Bobby wondered if that was still true, or if they would prefer separate rooms. It might be good for Sam to have somewhere he could go to be alone, and Dean might need some space now when he hadn’t before—a place he didn’t have to be a direct witness to his brother’s closed down behavior. He felt frustrated that he didn’t know what his boys would need without having to ask. Once upon a time, he would have been able to tell. It was as though he couldn’t read them anymore—especially Sam. Like a breach between them. 

When he got downstairs to the hall, he heard soft sounds of movement in the library, and pushed open the door to see Sam sitting on the couch with the Daemon Dierum open on his lap. His lips were moving soundlessly, and he didn’t seem to notice Bobby until he said his name.

He looked up, a frown pinching his brows together. “Oh, hey, Bobby.”

Bobby held back a sigh at the monotone voice and empty look in his eyes, and said, “Morning, Sam. How are you doing?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m looking at this exorcism. There’s a few different kinds.”

“There are,” Bobby agreed. “For most you can use the quick and dirty version, the shortest, but if you’re up against what you think is a heavy-hitter, you need the Rituale Romanum. Unless you’re really pushed for time, use that and it’ll do the job.”

Sam nodded, turning his attention back to the book.

“Have you eaten?” Bobby moved deeper into the room and looked into the kitchen for a sign that Sam had prepared something for himself.

“I don’t know,” Sam said vaguely.

Bobby couldn’t hide his sigh this time, and Sam looked up at him.

“I’ll fix you something,” Bobby said.

“You don’t need to.”

“If I don’t, will you do it for yourself?”

Sam fixed his vacant eyes on Bobby and said, “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Bobby shook his head sadly. “I can’t do much apart from worry about you right now, Sam. We’re all feeling the same. You’re not taking care of yourself. You’re losing weight, and you never had much to spare in the first place. It’s not good for you, especially while you’re still healing.”

“I’m fine,” Sam insisted, muffling the cough that belied his words behind his hand.

Bobby pulled up a chair and sat opposite him. He rested his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “I know you’re going through hell, son, but you have to take care of yourself. I have felt like you, I know what you’re going through, and I know how hard it is to care about anything else, but this is important. There are people in your life that you have to look after yourself for.”

Sam tucked a piece of paper into the book to mark his page and closed it. “Do you really know how it feels?” he asked curiously, looking truly interested for the first time in days. It made Bobby feel a little hopeful that he was going to be able to connect with him. “Did you feel like this after you lost your wife, too?”

Bobby nodded. “I did. It’s like being on fire. You’re so filled with anger and sadness and pain, and it feels like it’s going to drown you. Everything you do seems to take three times as much effort, even just getting out of bed in the morning, and you can’t imagine anything ever getting better. It will, though. You’ll find a way to live with what you’re missing, and things will get easier for you.”

Sam shook his head and looked down at his hands where they lay on his lap. “I don’t feel like that,” he said quietly.

Bobby’s breath caught at the fact Sam was finally opening up. He softened his voice and asked, “What do you feel, Sam?”

Sam looked up at him, and Bobby wished he hadn’t. There was nothing in his eyes at all. It was like looking into a void. Sam, who had expressed every emotion the moment he had it, never feeling the need to hide a thing from anyone, wasn’t giving the slightest hint that he was feeling anything at all.

“I don’t feel anything,” he stated. “I know I should, it should be agony, but there’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” Bobby asked weakly.

He had never imagined this. He thought Sam was just hiding what he felt, like he had after Karen, but Sam was saying he felt nothing at all. This was more than denial; it was the complete disconnect from all emotion.

“Nothing at all,” Sam said. “I loved Jess so much, and I _know_ she’s dead, but I can’t feel that pain at all, even though I know I should.” He looked past Bobby at the opposite wall, seemingly lost in himself as he said, “I was going to ask her to marry me. I had gone shopping for the ring with Becky to choose one, and I’d hidden it in my sock drawer. I was waiting to ask until I’d had my interview for law school. If I got the full ride I was going for, I was going to be able to give her a real future, so I waited before asking. But then the fire happened, and that ring probably melted down, but I don’t care. When I was in that fire, I wanted to die. I was breathing in the smoke as deep as I could, willing it to kill me, but it didn’t.”

Bobby licked his dry lips and rasped through his constricted throat, “You wanted to die?”

Sam nodded. “More than anything, yes. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it, but when I woke up in the hospital, that feeling was gone and nothing had taken its place.”

“Do you want to die now?” Bobby asked, unable to hide the terror in his voice.

“No.” He frowned slightly. “I probably should, that would make sense, but I don’t want anything at all but to stop. I don’t mean die, I won’t throw away what was stolen from Jess because I know I shouldn’t, but I wish I could stop anyway. It’s not right feeling the way I am. I look at you and mom and Dean, and I remember how much I used to love you all, but there’s nothing there anymore. It’s like it was wiped away by the fire. I have nothing.”

Bobby reached out a hand and then pulled it back quickly, unable to touch Sam. He was in shock.

Sam was always expressive with his love, like Mary, whereas Dean said it rarely; he showed it instead of vocalizing it. But Sam had said it. It was his version of a goodbye at the end of summer break, coupled with a hug for them all and kiss for his mom. But he couldn’t say it now, because he didn’t feel it.

Bobby had thought he understood what Sam was going through, feeling, as he’d felt it, too. But this numbness was a world apart from his grief and, he knew, Mary’s. And he had no idea what to do for his surrogate son. He didn’t need comfort or support. He couldn’t even have understanding, as none of them could understand what this was. There was no way to reach him and make him feel, as it would take something to connect to, and he had nothing. If Jessica’s death, the loss of the woman he had loved more than Bobby had even known—had planned to propose to, even—didn’t reach him, nothing they did would.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said dully. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No,” Bobby said quickly. “I’m glad you did. I’m just struggling with it. I don’t know how to fix this for you.”

“I don’t think anyone can,” Sam said. “This is it for me now.”

“It can’t be,” Bobby said, though he was scared Sam was right. “You will feel again. This has to be the shock. You’re still processing what happened. It’s not even been three weeks since Jess died. It’s too soon to make any judgments on it. How you feel now could change in a day, never mind another week.”

“That’s the problem,” Sam said. “I don’t feel anything at all.”

Bobby rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s too soon.” He said it again in an attempt to convince himself.

Sam shrugged. “If you think so.” He frowned and fixed his eyes on Bobby again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” Bobby vowed.

“The demon that killed Jess and my dad, was it there for me?”

Bobby sucked in a breath, and Sam nodded as if Bobby had answered aloud.

“I thought so,” he said.

“We don’t know anything for sure,” Bobby said, now leaning forward and gripping Sam’s arm. “It might not come back even.”

“I don’t care though, Bobby. I should, I know, but I don’t even care why it came or what it wanted from me. It doesn’t matter.”

Bobby felt guiltily relieved. He had no reassurance or answers to give Sam, as none of them knew why the demon was there, what it wanted from Sam, and that worried them all. Sam’s lack of worry or curiosity was wrong, but Bobby was glad of it as it saved him from having to lie or give empty comfort.

“I killed Jess, and probably my dad, too,” Sam went on, “but there’s nothing there for me.”

“You didn’t kill either of them,” Bobby said fiercely. “It was the demon, not you.”

Sam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, though. It might come back for me, but even that doesn’t scare me. I can only think of what I have to do for everyone else. I know you’d be upset if it took me, so I will learn this stuff, find a way to protect myself, but I can’t even care if it does.” He considered a moment. “Maybe I should go. I don’t want anyone else to be hurt if it comes back. I know that matters, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

Bobby gripped his arm tighter. “You’re not going anywhere. If it comes back, and that’s a big if, we might be wrong about it coming for you, we will stop it together. Your mom is working on finding something that can kill it. The Colt—it’s a gun that can kill anything, including a demon.”

Sam looked only mildly interested. “Okay.”

Bobby released him and leaned back in his chair. “It’s going to be all right, Sam. We’ll stop the demon, and you will break through this block. You are going to feel again, I promise, and we’ll help you through it.”

Sam picked up the book again. “I should read this if it’s coming for me.”

Bobby recognized the dismissal, and he stood and pushed the chair up against the desk again.

“I’ll fix breakfast,” he said, walking into the kitchen and not looking back to see Sam’s disinterest. “Then we’ll wake your mom and Dean.”

Sam didn’t answer, and Bobby went to the fridge and opened the door. As he stared in at the contents, he felt his eyes burning. He wiped an impatient hand across his face, forcing back the swell of emotion through pure force of will.

He wished he hadn’t spoken to Sam at all. It had been easier to believe he was just grieving privately; he could relate to that. This complete void in emotion was so much harder to handle. He didn’t know how to even begin to help, and he dreaded telling Mary and Dean. He knew he needed to, though. This wasn’t a problem he could fix alone, if anyone could at all. They had an even stronger relationship with Sam than he did. They might be able to come up with a way to reach him together. Someone had to know, something had to change, as what Sam had become wasn’t natural.

They had to help him find his way back.

xXx

Bobby was in the engine of the Shelby with Mary sitting on the chair behind him. They weren’t really talking, and when they did it was about the car and nothing important. They’d left Sam and Dean inside, studying the exorcism texts.

Bobby had come out for some space to think about how he was going to handle the conversation with Mary and Dean that he knew he needed to have, but Mary had followed him out, scattering his thoughts. 

He knew he needed to tell them what Sam had said, but he wasn’t sure how. They had been struggling when they thought his reticence came from grief, and it was going to be so much worse if they knew he wasn’t feeling even that. They weren’t going to be able to understand it. Bobby didn’t himself.

Sam was the most expressive member of their family; the one that felt as deeply as Dean, but didn’t feel the need to ever hide it. It had been hard to deal with it when he stopped, but now knowing why he wasn’t showing it—because he didn’t feel—Bobby felt it all so much more. They were going to struggle with it even more than him.

He needed to share what he’d learned from Sam, though, and he knew he needed to do it soon. He had no right to hide something so important from them.

The door opened, and Bobby pulled his head out from under the hood as Dean followed a rush of cold air into the workshop. He kicked it closed behind him and carried the mugs he was holding to Bobby and Mary.

Mary took hers with a smile and word of thanks, and Bobby said, “You’re a good man, Dean,” grateful for the hot drink in the cold workshop.

He sipped the coffee as Dean positioned himself in front of the space heater and cupped his hands around his own mug. “It’s freezing out there,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we got snow,” Mary said.

“It’ll be early,” Dean pointed out.

Mary nodded. “Hopefully it’ll skip us by.”

“Where’s Sam?” Bobby asked, unable to keep the foreboding from his voice. Now they were alone together, he knew he was going to have to talk to them about what Sam had said.

“Inside,” Dean said, the crease of a frown between his brows. “His friend Brady called. Why?”

“Just asking,” Bobby said.

“Is he okay?” Mary asked, her obvious worry lifting her to her feet and toward the door without waiting for an answer.

“He was fine when I left him a minute ago,” Dean said. “He was talking—well, listening—to Brady.”

Bobby sighed. “Well, he’s as fine as he can be right now.”

Mary turned back, fixing Bobby with an intense look. “Why do you look like that then? What do you know, Bobby?

Bobby set his mug down on the tool chest and rubbed a hand over his face. “I spoke to Sam earlier. He opened up a little about what’s going on with him, and how he’s feeling.”

“What did he say?” Mary asked, pressing a hand to her chest. “How bad is it? Is he safe? Is that why you look like that? Is he going to hurt himself?”

“No,” Bobby said, hurrying after her as she rushed to the door and pulled it open. “He’s safe. He swore to me he wouldn’t do anything stupid. I really don’t think that’s a risk. Come sit down and I’ll tell you.” He thought the conversation would be better handled if she was seated.

Mary allowed him to lead her back to the chair and guide her down. Dean stood beside her and put his hand on her shoulder, an unspoken gesture of support and comfort.

Bobby moved back to lean on the car, trying to make the situation less tense by showing himself as relaxed. “Sam said he’s been feeling nothing,” he started.

“How can you feel nothing?” Dean asked. “How can _Sam_ feel nothing? He feels everything at once.”

“He normally does,” Bobby agreed. “But not this time. He doesn’t feel anything about what’s happened.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Things were even more serious with Jess than we realized. He was going to propose to her. He wanted a whole life together, but now she’s dead, and he doesn’t even feel sad. He’s just numb, empty, nothing.” Bobby shrugged. “There’s just nothing there.”

“That’s impossible,” Dean said.

Bobby shook his head. “It’s not, though. It’s what’s happened to him. I know he was telling me the truth, as I felt nothing coming from him when he was talking. There was nothing in his eyes.” He averted his gaze as he told them the worst part of the story. “When he was in the fire, when he realized Jessica was dead, he said he wanted to die, too. He was sucking down the smoke so it would kill him. That’s why he was so sick after. He _wanted_ to end it all, but he told me he doesn’t feel that anymore. He should still feel that grief, he knows, but he doesn’t feel anything now.”

Dean’s hand tightened reflexively on Mary’s shoulder and she winced. Dean quickly loosed his fingers and apologized.

“Is it denial?” Mary asked. “Does he just not believe she’s dead?”

“I don’t think so. He said he knows she’s gone, but it was like he was commenting on the weather. There was nothing in his voice. He’s not even scared. He figured out that the demon might have been coming for him, that it still might be coming, but there was no fear. He just didn’t care. He said he killed John and Jess, but he can’t even care about that. It ‘didn’t matter’.”

“He didn’t kill them!” Dean said harshly.

Bobby held up a hand. “I told him the same thing,” he said soothingly. “But he didn’t need the reassurance, or comfort.”

Mary buried her face in her hands, pressing down hard, and then looked up at Bobby. “What the hell do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Bobby admitted. “I’m out of my depth with it. I hoped one of you might be able to connect with him where I can’t. He’s much closer to you than he is me.”

“That’s not true,” Mary said. “It’s not been true for years.”

Bobby shook his head. He was hoping it was true. Not because he didn’t care about Sam, he loved him like a son, but because he had tried and failed to reach Sam. If they were closer than him, they might be able to do it instead.

Dean raked a hand over his face. “We have to talk to him, snap him out of it somehow.”

“What do we say?” Mary asked. “I don’t even know where to start. I thought I knew what he was feeling, but this…”

“We have to get him to fight back,” Dean said firmly. “If he was angry, it would be better than this. We’re hunting the demon, so we make him a part of that.”

“I don’t think that will work,” Bobby said. “We talked about that. He didn’t seem interested. I told him about the Colt, but there was...” He shrugged. “I don’t think he cares about revenge either. He’s not scared for himself. He said something about leaving to protect us, but he didn’t argue when I said he had to stay. It’s like he had no real opinion or feeling for anything.”

“I don’t want him hunting like that,” Mary said, rubbing her wet eyes. “He needs to be focused to be safe.”

“He’s focused on studying demons right now,” Bobby said. “He’s doing that so he can protect himself for us. Maybe if we focus on that.”

Dean’s head snapped up. “He cares about us then. He might not be grieving or scared, but he’s feeling that. He loves us. We have to connect to that.”

Bobby looked into Dean’s fervent eyes and knew he couldn’t tell him that particular truth. Maybe focusing Sam’s mind on studying and research would help. It was as good an idea as they had, but he wouldn’t be doing it because he loved them, because he didn’t now. He was doing it out of duty.

“Yes,” Mary said eagerly. “It has to be about us. That will break through to him. Won’t it, Bobby?”

Bobby forced himself to nod and smile uncertainly. “Yeah, I think maybe that’s the best thing we can try right now.”

Mary sighed with relief and wiped at her eyes. “Okay. Good. I’m going to talk to him. Maybe if I can show him how much I care about him, that I understand his loss, he’ll realize he feels something, too.”

She zipped her coat and strode out of the workshop, closing the door behind her.

Bobby sipped his quickly cooling coffee and asked, “You want to help out with this, Dean? Give your mom and Sam some time alone?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean said. “What are we doing?”

“We need this battery out, and it’s in there pretty tight. I want to fit a new one so we can see what she’s capable of.”

Dean picked up a wrench and leaned under the hood.

Bobby was pleased he was distracted and the conversation was over, but he felt guilty for the way it had ended. He was still keeping things from them. He was doing it to protect them and to give them hope, but he was doubtful it was going to help Sam at all. He was just going to be smothered by his family as they attempted to reach him.

Sam would have to deal with that, though, as to tell Mary and Dean the truth was to take away what they were clinging to: that Sam could actually be reached after all. 


	17. Chapter 17

**_Chapter Seventeen_ **

Sam knew Bobby had wasted no time telling Mary and Dean what they’d talked about, how Sam wasn’t able to feel, because they changed almost straight away. In the three weeks since their conversation, they got even more clingy. Mary had tried to engage him to set up some program of her laptop, something Ash had made to track demons, but Sam had faked ignorance and escaped, knowing that she and Dean knew as much, if not more, about computers than him and would be able to handle it.

They seemed to want to be close to Sam every minute when he was awake, and Sam felt Dean staring at him when he was pretending to sleep. Mary told him she loved him at least once a day, and though Dean said it less than her, it was still more than he ever had before. It was more than that, though. Mary was constantly touching him—pats on the hand, kisses to his cheek, a hand on his arm when she was sitting close to him. She’d always been expressive with her affection, but this was taking it to an extreme. It was as if they wanted him to know he was loved unconditionally, that the fact he couldn’t feel it for them made them more eager to show that, for themselves, nothing had changed.

Sam wouldn’t have been surprised if it had changed things. They were pouring their love into a gulf of nothingness, and he didn’t think he could have done the same. It would be easier to close down his affection the same way, to protect himself, if he was in their shoes.

He knew it should have made him feel smothered, the constant show of love and affection, but it was nothing. It didn’t make him feel anything—not even pity for their doomed mission.

Dean’s breath caught and he snuffled into his pillow, drawing Sam’s attention from his thoughts.

He knew he should be sleeping, as it was early morning and he hadn’t slept at all. He was going to be busy the next day with their demonology studies. He was still working on the Rituale Romanum. It seemed an endless task, but he wanted to be able to recite it from memory so he could use that and not the ‘quick and dirty’ exorcism Bobby said would work on most demons. If the yellow-eyed demon they suspected of killing Jessica came back, he wanted to be able to send it back to hell and not fail with the short version.

The mission to prepare for the demon was what he was focused on. There was no emotion behind it; there was just a sense of duty. His family wouldn’t be safe until it was dealt with—dead or exorcised—and he wouldn’t be safe either. They wanted him safe and protected if it came back, so he was learning how to make that possible. Just because he didn’t feel love now, he knew he had before, and in the absence of anything else, that was something to cling to. 

Sam’s eyes finally began to drift closed, and he focused on his breathing and trying to ignore the thoughts that circled his mind. With Dean’s snores as background noise, he fell asleep.

It was as if the dream was waiting for him.

He was standing in a busy room, surrounded by people with red cups in their hands and the smell of beer in the air. A woman in a skimpy Mrs. Claus outfit was walking past him with a tray of brightly colored Jell-O shots in her hands. 

As Sam watched, Brady stopped the woman and grabbed a shot. She grinned at him and said something Sam couldn’t hear over the loud Christmas songs playing from the stereo. Brady kissed her cheek and she laughed, and then he knocked back the shot, squeezing the plastic cup. He set the empty cup down on her tray and walked toward the door.

Sam followed him out, trying to place the setting. He had been there before, he knew, but it was so crowded it was hard to see anything but people.

He followed Brady outside and watched as Brady took out a pack of cigarettes and shook one into his hand. There were other people outside smoking already, and Sam could smell the smoke that clouded around them. Brady leaned against one of the thick columns and pulled out his lighter.

Sam saw a person running toward the house, wearing a baggy black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, keeping the face in shadow. He was confused at first, but as the shape barreled towards Brady, he cried out in shock. The figure collided with Brady, knocking him down, and Brady jabbed a knee up and into the attacker’s groin and tried to push them off. The person that grappled with him rolled to the side and then punched Brady in the stomach.

At first it didn’t look that bad, but then Sam saw the blood blossoming on Brady’s white shirt. The hooded person scrambled to their feet and fled as other people rushed toward Brady. His hands were clutching his stomach, but blood was spreading under them, between his fingers, and soaking his shirt.

Someone took off a jacket and pressed it over the wound. Sam moved closer, his eyes finding Brady’s, and he saw the terror in his friend as his lifeblood spilled. He seemed to fix his gaze on Sam and his lips moved with a word Sam couldn’t hear, and then his eyes slid closed and his hands dropped to his side. Sam knew without seeing his still chest that he was dead.

A woman screamed and other voices were shouting, and Sam’s own voice joined them, shouting in shock and horror.

“Sam!”

There was a sharp blow on his arm, and Sam’s eyes snapped open to see Dean standing over him with a fist raised.

Sam gasped air into his lungs that felt empty, and Dean lay his hand on Sam’s back, supporting his weight as he helped his brother to sit. Sam felt weak, and his vision was blurred, but more pressing was the fear that had enveloped him. He was feeling for the first time in weeks, truly feeling, and it was overwhelming. He was so scared, almost as scared as he had been the night Jessica died. He was sure it was real, another dream that would come true, as it had felt just the same. He had been there, watching the scene play out, and his senses had been alive the way they were when he’d dreamed of Jessica. Unless he stopped it, this dream was going to come true, too. 

“What happened?” Dean asked.

“Brady,” Sam said weakly, reaching for his phone from the bedside table. “I have to speak to Brady. I have to warn him.”

Dean blanched. “Did you see something?”

“Yes,” Sam said curtly, pulling up the number from his contacts and hitting dial. It rang through to voicemail, and Sam cursed as he hung up and redialed the number. This time it was answered, and before Brady could do more than say Sam’s name, Sam was speaking in a rush. “Brady, where are you?”

 _“I just got home,”_ Brady said, his voice slow and drawling, the way it always was when he was stoned _. “Got some premium bud from a freshman and spent the night smoking up in the park. Good times.”_

“You’re not at a party?” Sam asked.

_“I am kinda. I’ve got the lights down low and Pink Floyd playing, but I’m alone, so I don’t think it really counts as a party. I have one lined up tomorrow, though. It’s the annual Sigma Nu Christmas blowout, and you know those guys put on a show. I hear they’ve got a Santa suit for us to wear while all the pretty girls sit on our knees and tell us how they want us for Christmas. I plan on delivering.”_

“You can’t go,” Sam said urgently, knowing that was where it was going to happen. The columns he’d seen were the ones at the Sigma Nu frat house. He’d been there lots of times for parties.

 _“I know you’re worried, but I’ve got this under control, Sam.”_ Brady said. _“I am in control of what I’m putting in my body. It’s just a good time. Chill out.”_

“I can’t chill!” Sam said harshly.

Brady instantly became apologetic. _“Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I know you’re going through it, with Jess and all. I was just running my mouth. It was insensitive. You don’t need to hear about me partying. I just meant—“_

“I don’t care about that!” Sam snapped. “I’m thinking about you. You cannot go to that party.”

 _“You don’t need to worry about me,”_ Brady said, sounding mellow. _“How are you doing? Are you thinking of coming back after Winter break?”_

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a pounding headache and his mind was swimming was blurring. “You can’t go to that party, Brady,” he said seriously.

_“Sorry, Sam, I can’t hear you. I’m running out of battery and going into a tunnel while hanging up.”_

There was a laugh and the call disconnected.

Sam threw his phone down onto the bed, gripping his head in his hands. The pain was pounding.

“Sammy!” Dean was gripping his shoulder and leaning in close.

Sam tried to focus through the pain. Brady was going to be attacked and killed at that party unless he did something to stop it. He needed to be there.

He lowered his hands and got to his feet, making Dean step back quickly.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked. “Did you see something again?”

The door opened and Mary peered in. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Sam! What’s wrong with you?”

He guessed he must look pretty bad, as she rushed in and grabbed his elbow, guiding him to sit on the bed again. He didn’t have the strength to resist. Though the pain was starting to fade now, his emotions were overloading him. It was as if they were magnified a hundred times stronger since he had not felt them in so long.

“I’ve got to go to California,” he stated. “Brady’s in trouble.”

“You can’t go to California,” Mary said firmly. “You’re not fit enough to travel.”

Sam frowned. His chest was almost clear now, and his back was healing well. He would be uncomfortable to travel, but it wasn’t impossible. “I have to,” he said, his frustration clear in his voice. “I saw it happen.”

Mary’s eyes widened for a moment before she covered her reaction with a soft smile and sat down beside him on the bed, putting her arm around him. “What did you see?”

“He’s going to be stabbed,” Sam said. “It looked like a mugging gone wrong. They had a knife. He’s going to die. It was just like when I dreamed of Jess. Everything was so clear. I was right there with him, watching it happen.”

“Tell me everything you saw,” Dean said, his eyes intense and fixed on Sam. “I’ll go.”

“I need to—” Sam started, but Mary spoke over him.

“You’re healing still, Sam. Dean can handle this. If you go you might be hurt.”

“So might Dean,” Sam pointed out, worry for his brother now filling him. It was familiar, and born out of love for Dean, but it also felt wrong, as if his mind was rebelling against the connection.

“I’m faster and stronger than you,” Dean said. “Even when you’re at the top of your game. You haven’t tackled anything even a little like this in years. I do it all the time hunting. Tell me what you saw and I’ll stop it.”

Sam took a breath, beaten down by logic. He would probably be a hindrance in the situation, not a help, putting Dean and Brady both at risk. 

“It was at a Christmas party at a frat house,” Sam said. “Brady goes out for a smoke, and this person in a black hoodie runs at him. I don’t know if it was a man or woman, but I’d guess a man. They knock him down, and when Brady fights back, they stab him.” He rubbed his temples, trying to recall every detail. “That Wham song is playing, the Christmas one, and he’s outside the back door. It’s Sigma Nu on Mayfield Avenue. The house is huge, with big white columns, and Brady is leaning against one of them when it happens.”

“When will it happen?” Mary asked, her hand stroking calming circles on Sam’s back.

“Tomorrow night,” Sam said. “Brady told me he was going to their Christmas blowout.” He looked up at Dean. “You won’t make it in time driving.”

“I’ll catch a flight,” Dean said confidently.

Sam knew Dean was terrified of flying and avoided it whenever possible. “Are you sure?” he asked.

Dean’s lips quirked into a smile. “Saving your brother’s best friend’s life trumps a phobia.”

“Thank you,” Sam said fervently.

“I’ll get you a flight,” Mary said. “Get your stuff together.”

Dean grabbed his duffel from under the bed and began to stuff clothes inside it.

Sam bent over and gripped his hair tight, feeling the physical pain offsetting the emotional. He was scared for Brady, worried about Dean, and it was too much.

Dean laid a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

“Yes,” Sam said miserably.

Dean looked worried. “Where? Is it your back?”

“It’s everywhere.” Sam swallowed hard. “I can _feel_.”

Dean looked startled. “Like _feel,_ feel? Jess and everything?”

“Not Jess. Not yet,” Sam admitted, feeling a new curl of fear in his gut at the realization. He was scared for Dean and Brady, and he was scared of the dream that appeared to show the future, but he didn’t feel loss, which meant there was still worse to come.

“I’m scared, Dean,” he admitted.

Dean gripped his shoulders and leaned in close. “I’m going to save your friend, Sammy, I promise.”

Sam nodded as if that was the reassurance he needed, but his mind rebelled. He was scared of what was going to happen when the pain of losing Jessica came.

Whenever that last numb piece of him woke up, when his loss came to him, he was going to be in agony. It was going to break him.


	18. Chapter 18

When Dean walked out through arrivals in San Francisco airport, he saw Caleb standing among the other people waiting to meet their loved ones and drivers with their name cards. He looked out of place in his grubby leather jacket and Journey tour shirt, in need of a shave, but Dean was relieved to see him.

Mary had said she was going to call around and see if anyone was in the area to join him, and Caleb was the best choice of all the hunters they knew. He was good at what he did, fast, and he wasn’t going to ask too many questions—though Dean had the cover story he’d come up with on the flight to give him anyway.

It would also set Mary’s mind at ease if Dean wasn’t alone. The very first rule he and Sam had learned was to protect themselves first. Innocents mattered, but they could only help them if they were alive. You didn’t take stupid risks, and you didn’t lose track of the mission for a moment.

Dean knew she herself didn’t always live by that rule, she did take risks, but she always made sure he didn’t. It was easier for them both when they were together, as they weren’t worried about what the other was doing. It worked out most of the time, as Dean was coasting behind Mary as a PI. He wasn’t old enough to make it work alone, so he used her credentials to back him up.

When Dean reached him, Caleb shook his hand, then pulled him forward into a one-armed hug and slapped his back. “You flew,” he said, sounding amused. “This must be an important hunt.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “I was fine.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“I’m fine now.”

It had been a rough flight, though turbulence was minimal. Dean just hated flying. It was something he couldn’t control, the flight. If there was a problem, there was nothing he could do to help himself. He had to rely on the pilots, strangers, to take care of him. Dean struggled with that. He preferred to be with people he knew he could trust for his own safety. 

He lifted his duffel over his shoulder and walked to the exit. They moved slowly at first, among the other mass of people exiting the airport and lingering for cabs, but when they were away from the rank, they sped up and headed for the parking garage.

“What’s the deal with the hunt?” Caleb asked. “Mary said it was something to do with one of Sam’s college buddies.”

“It might be nothing,” Dean said, though he was sure he was wrong. Sam had _seen_ it. “But Sam saw something on a college page on Myspace that makes us think his friend is in trouble. There’s going to be a frat house party tonight, and it’s going to happen there. We think,” he added quickly, knowing he needed to be careful with how much he said.

“So we’re here to break up a fight between a couple rich kids?”

“Maybe,” Dean said. “Sam’s worried, though, so I said I’d make the trip.”

“How is Sam? Bill told me about his girlfriend. Man, that’s rough. I thought about coming by your place to see him, but I figured it might be too soon.”

“It’s definitely too soon,” Dean agreed, thinking of how Sam had been for weeks and what he had been when Dean left—a wreck under Mary’s arm with his eyes haunted. He said he wasn’t feeling Jessica’s death yet, just everything else, and look what that had done to him. Dean was scared of what was going to happen when the reality of her death reached him.

They reached Caleb’s Ram pickup, and Dean threw his duffle into the back and got in beside Caleb who had started the engine and was ready to go. 

They pulled out of the spot and headed to the exit where dozens of cars were waiting their chance to get out, too.

“So it’s nothing funky?” Caleb asked. “Just rich kids fighting?”

“Nothing funky,” Dean said easily. “But it could be serious anyway. You need to be careful.”

Sam said it had looked like a mugging gone wrong, and the story fit—rich kids at a rich kids’ party—but Dean wasn’t going to underestimate what they were facing. Whoever it was that attacked Brady, they came armed and had killed him in Sam’s dream. That was probably an accident, an attack in the heat of the moment, but it meant they were capable of murder.

Dean wasn’t taking risks. He was going in prepared.

xXx

They had to pass Sam’s old building to get to Brady’s place on Bryant Street, and Dean looked up at it. It was still cordoned off and the walls smoke-blackened, but the first floor looked okay. It was Sam’s place on the second floor that showed the most damage. The windows had blown out—probably by the explosion that had thrown Sam down the stairs—and shards of glass still twinkled in the frames. It was impossible not to see how close they’d been to losing Sam when looking at the place. The fire had been merciless.

“That Sam’s place?” Caleb asked.

“Yes,” Dean said heavily.

“Man, that was some fire.”

Dean just nodded.

They turned a corner and Dean looked at the names and numbers outside the building, searching for the address Sam had given him as Brady’s. When he saw it, he told Caleb and they pulled over. It was a nicer building than Sam’s had been, but Dean guessed it made sense when he thought of what Brady had driven. He obviously had more money than Sam, who had made it through on a scholarship and loans supplemented by Mary and Dean’s earnings and the garage incomes. 

Dean and Caleb climbed out, and Dean led the way through the front door and up two flights of stairs to the third floor where Brady lived. He found the right door and knocked loudly to be heard over the thumping music that was coming from within. They waited, but there was no answer, so Dean banged with his fist. The music turned down, and Dean knocked again. A moment later there was the sound of a bolt disengaging and the door opened.

Brady peered out, his cheeks flushed and his eyes not quite focused. “Hey!” he said excitedly. “You’re Sam’s brother. Dean, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “And this is a friend, Caleb,”

“Is Sam with you?” Brady asked hopefully, trying to look past the two men blocking his door.

“Afraid not,” Dean said. “He sent us, though.”

Brady’s face fell but he stepped back. “Come on in.”

Dean walked past him into the hall and Caleb came in after him. They waited until Brady had closed the door behind them, and then followed him down the corridor and into a spacious lounge.

It would have been a nice place if not for the fact it was a mess. There were take-out cartons and pizza boxes on the coffee table, and an oversized bong among them. A small square mirror sat on top of a pizza box, and there were still smudges of white powder on it. Dean guessed from that and the empty yellow pill bottle beside it that Brady wasn’t particularly discerning about what substances he put in his body.

Sam had told them about Brady’s personality change when he’d come back from break with a drug habit and dropped out, but Dean hadn’t imagined it would be quite like this. He’d seemed pretty put-together when he’d been at the motel and funeral. Dean now wondered about Sam’s sense in getting in a car to leave the hospital with a man like this.

Brady fell into an armchair and said, “Sit, get comfy. Do you want something to drink? I’ve got beer and maybe some tequila.” He leaned to the side, picked up a bottle of Jose Cuervo by the neck and lifted it to see a trickle of liquid rolling around the bottom. “Maybe not tequila. I don’t even remember opening that.”

“We don’t want a drink,” Dean said, perching on the edge of the couch. “We need to talk to you about this party.”

Brady groaned, “Aww, man, is he for real? He sent you to stage an intervention? I get that he’s worried, but the crazy phone call was bad enough. He didn’t need to send you halfway across the country. Is this some weird grief displacement thing? Tell him I am going to clean up in the new year. New year, new me. I might even go to one of those rehab spa places. I hear they can be pretty good. It’ll please my parents, too. But I’m not doing that until I have had the best end of year blowout I can, and that means parties.”

Dean thought about giving him the cover story of a threat Sam had read online, but he then realized, as he looked at Brady’s wide eyes and empty tequila bottle in his hand, he wasn’t going to reach him with sense. The only way he was going to save him was by physically saving him.

“You’ve got it wrong,” he said, raising his hands and smiling widely. “Sam told us about this party he’s worried about, and I figured it’s something I should probably experience in my life, so I brought my buddy to party with us. Just don’t tell Sam; he thinks we’re here to help.”

A smile spread over Brady’s face. “Seriously? That’s awesome! We can absolutely party together. It’ll be a real good time.” He rubbed his hands together. “The party isn’t till later, but we can get stared early. I’ve got to pick up some illicit substances, but if you’re interested, you can come and we’ll hook you up, too.”

“No, we’re good,” Dean said. “We’ll stick to tequila. We’ve got a few other things to do for Sam while we’re in town, so we’ll meet you later.”

He had no desire to go with Brady while he scored, and he wasn’t putting anything stronger than alcohol in his body. He wasn’t an idiot.

Brady shrugged, though he looked a little disappointed. “Meet me at Scotty’s at eight then. We can head to the party together.”

Dean knew Scotty’s as it had been Sam’s local haunt and they’d gone there together when he and Mary had visited Sam in college.

He agreed to be there and shook Brady’s hand, and then they let themselves out of the apartment. As they got out onto the street, they both took deep breaths of clean air.

“For someone smart enough to get into Stanford, that guy is pretty damn dumb,” Caleb observed.

“Yeah. He wasn’t always like this. Sam used to talk about him. He was a sensible, decent guy. Studied hard when he needed to. I don’t know what happened to him.” He sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter. This thing’s happening at the party, so we’re going to be there to stop it.”

Caleb nodded. “It’ll be weird to do something so human for a change.”

“We’re still saving a life,” Dean pointed out.

Caleb frowned. “You think it’s going to be that serious?” 

Dean quickly looked away, realizing he’d said too much. “It could be. Better to be prepared.”

“Sure,” Caleb said slowly. “Let’s get a motel. We’ve got a wait until we can actually do the saving.”

Dean opened the truck door and climbed in, reminding himself he had to be careful if he wasn’t going to tip Caleb off. The guy wasn’t stupid, but he was a hunter. Dean didn’t know what his reaction would be if he knew Sam was psychic.

xXx

Dean had been to many parties in his life, most of them during high school as he’d lost most of his close school friends when he’d started hunting, replacing them with people that knew the truth like Caleb, but he’d never been to one like this before.

The house they were heading to was situated at the end of a long driveway and was massive. There was a huge inflatable snowman on one side of the drive which a man was boxing with, and on the other were reindeer statues that two women were attempting to ride like horses. Though it was still relatively early, they were obviously drunk, and they kept falling off. 

Caleb whistled. “This is going to be an experience.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, his tone wondering.

They reached the wide-open door of the house, and Brady stepped inside and raised his hands above him and shouted, “The party has started!”

In answer, a group of people cheered and raised their cups.

Dean didn’t think he’d ever been in a place surrounded with this kind of wealth before. The house was obviously worth at least a couple million, and the décor screamed money. The fact this place was entrusted to students that would throw a party like this boggled his mind.

Brady led them right and they came into a large room where beer pong was set up on a pool table. Women dressed in skimpy Mrs. Claus outfits were leaning over it, and men were standing back to get a better position to eye them appreciatively.

“This is like every bad teen movie I’ve ever seen,” Caleb said loudly, speaking over the Christmas music that was pounding over a speaker system.

Brady turned back and grinned at them. “It’s awesome, right?”

Dean forced a smile. “Yeah, great.”

Brady laughed. “Let me introduce you to some people.” He led them over to the pool table and grabbed the hand of a petite brunette who turned and squealed, “Brady!”

“Hey, Carrie. I want to introduce you to some friends of mine. This is Dean Winchester, Sam’s older brother, and his buddy Caleb.”

She eyed him appraisingly and held out a hand, palm down as if she was expecting Dean to kiss it. He took it and turned it so they could shake.

“How is Sam?” she asked. “It must have been awful, losing Jess like that. I can’t even imagine. Me and Jess were like best friends.”

“He’s doing better,” Dean lied, sensing the disingenuous note to her voice.

“Good.” She nodded and glanced up to where a sprig of mistletoe was hanging from a light fitting. Dean saw that there were many such sprigs, strategically placed to invite kisses from almost anyone in the vicinity. “Mistletoe,” she said sultrily, leaning toward Dean.

He stepped back. “I’m allergic.”

He glanced to the side and saw Brady was shaking a pill into his hand and knocking it back with a shot from a passing tray. As little as Dean wanted to be around this idiot that was poisoning his body, he knew he had to stick close to him if he was going to protect him. 

He trailed him into another large room where a dancefloor had developed in the center. In the corner there was a man dressed in a Santa suit with a fake beard, sitting with girls queuing up to take a turn on his knee as one already perched whispered into his ear.

“Want to meet Santa?” Brady asked with an impish smile.

“I’ll pass,” Dean said.

The woman that had tried to catch Dean under the mistletoe approached with two pink Jell-O shots in her hand, complete with toothpicks. She put one into Dean’s resisting hand and said, “Had one of these before?” Without waiting for an answer, she took out the toothpick and ran it around the edge of the plastic cup, and then licked it slowly with what she probably thought was allure. She knocked it back and grinned at him. “Your turn.”

Dean shook his head. “I’m allergic to that, too.”

“I’m not,” Brady said cheerfully, snatching it out of Dean’s hand and dropping the toothpick on the floor then knocking the shot back, squeezing the sides of the plastic cup to release it. He handed the crushed cup to the disappointed girl and said, “Get me another, Carrie. I need a smoke.”

Dean’s stomach tightened as he recognized the first clue Sam had given him for the attack. It was followed quickly by the music changing to the awful Wham song. He looked around for Caleb and saw him pinned by two women under the mistletoe. Knowing he needed to be close to Brady more than he needed backup, he shouted Caleb’s name and followed Brady through an open door. 

Brady took out a pack of cigarettes and waved to a group of other smokers, then leaned against the column. Dean looked around for a sign of the hooded figure Sam had seen and saw them barreling around the side of the house. Dean ran at them, shouting for Caleb again as he collided with the person’s stomach and tackled them to the ground. He pinned their hands above their head, seeing the knife gripped in their hand.

The hood fell back and Dean realized it was a woman. He was surprised, as she was stronger than he’d expected for her slight frame. She was trying to buck him off, and Dean leant his full weight on her.

“I’ll be damned,” Caleb said beside him.

“Knife!” Dean snapped.

Caleb kicked the woman’s hand and she dropped the knife. He grabbed it up and added his weight to Dean’s, pressing his foot to her shoulder.

Satisfied that she was pinned and no longer a threat, Dean looked up at Brady who was standing beside him, his face slack with fear, and said, “Call the cops.”

“Already done,” a man said, coming to them. He leaned into Dean’s space and looked down at the woman. “Bethan! What the hell are you doing?”

The woman, Bethan, glared balefully up at him, but didn’t answer.

“The cops are coming, Caleb,” Dean pointed out.

“What do you have?” Caleb asked.

“Switch blade in my boot,” Dean said. “You?”

“My Glock.”

Dean knew they were in a precarious position with their weapons in California, and he made a quick decision. “Get them out of here.”

“You sure?”

Dean nodded and turned to the guy that had told them the cops were on their way. “You! Take his place. Get on your knees behind her and put all your weight on her shoulders.”

The man knelt and quickly exchanged his weight for Caleb’s.

Dean felt Caleb tugging his blade out of his boot and then he patted Dean’s shoulder.

“Call my mom,” Dean instructed. “Tell them it’s over. Brady is okay.”

“Okay,” Caleb said. “I’ll see you at the motel.”

His feet disappeared from Dean’s view. 

Someone had turned the music off inside, and the people that had been partying only minutes before were crowding around Dean and the pinned woman. Dean heard sirens in the distance, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

He was going to have to deal with cops, but that was nothing new in his walk of life as a PI, and Brady was safe. It was going to take a while, but he’d get it done and then he’d call Sam. He would be able to reassure him for himself that his friend was safe, that they’d caught the would-be murderer.

He would bring Sam some relief, but only some. With the attack he’d dreamed of coming into being, Dean thought the trouble was only just beginning for his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is one more chapter to this part of the story, but Part Two is ready to go so there won't be a wait between updates. I will post the last chapter on Saturday and the new story will start Wednesday. 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me so far. I am excited to post Part Two as it's a lot more plot based and less about the emotional development of the story. There is more action, too, and we will meet a character I am very fond of.


	19. Chapter 19

Mary and Sam were sitting at the kitchen table. Mary had made them both coffees, but Sam wasn’t drinking his, instead slowly turning the cup and running his finger around the rim. They were waiting for Bobby to get back from collecting Dean at the airport.

The last two days had been difficult for them all, but none more than Sam. His dream had unblocked something in him, and instead of feeling nothing, he was feeling almost everything. He told Dean he wasn’t feeling grief, but he was obviously overwhelmed by whatever he was feeling. Maybe it was just the fact he was feeling at all.

Mary was struggling, too. This new, jumpy and wide-eyed version of her son was harder to deal with than the one that had been closed off. Though that had worried her, and she’d tried to reach him, make him feel, he hadn’t been suffering. Now he was.

She was worried about what effect this might all have on Dean, too. He said he was fine, hadn’t even gotten a scratch, but the fact he’d witnessed Sam’s dream happening firsthand, that he’d averted it, had him stressed. He admitted to her when he’d called before his flight that he was scared of what it meant that Sam was having ‘visions’ of the future. Hunters had strong views on psychics. There were some, like her, Dean and Bobby who trusted and used their expertise, even called some of them friends, but there were more who distrusted them, and in some cases, saw them as a threat. Gordon Walker was especially vocal against them. He had a lot of influence among some members of the community, and Mary was worried what would happen if someone like him found out about Sam.

There was what it meant for Sam, too. The two dreams he’d had were of people he cared about dying. What if there were more? Was he going to live in fear of his dreams, knowing that there was always a chance of seeing someone dying?

She wanted to understand why it was happening. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact the demon had been in Sam’s room that night for a reason. He wouldn’t just have come to kill. He’d made the deal for entry after all. If it was death he wanted, he could have killed at any time. The date could be a coincidence, or there could have been a reason that he waited for the exact day of Sam’s six-month birthday, ten years after Mary had made her deal. She was afraid that this was something she’d done to Sam. If she hadn’t made that deal, Sam and Dean would never have been born, as John would have been dead. She would never regret their lives for anything, but she would never forgive herself if this was her fault, another blame to lay at her feet along with John’s death.

There was the sound of a car pulling up outside, and Sam’s head snapped up. “They’re here,” he said, his voice tense.

Mary squeezed his hand and said, “It’s going to be okay, honey.”

Sam looked into her eyes, his own pleading with her. “Is it?”

“Yes,” she said forcefully. “We’ll fix it.”

Sam looked away, and after a moment the back door opened and Dean and Bobby came in.

Dean came straight to Sam and gripped his shoulder, making Sam look up at him. “He’s fine, Sammy,” he said. “Freaked out, of course, but fine. She didn’t get close to him. The cops have her now. They think they can get her for assault, and if not, carrying a switchblade means a six-month lockup.”

“She didn’t actually touch him, though?” Sam asked, his brow furrowed with worry. “Can they still prosecute?”

“No. She didn’t get him, but there were a bunch of witnesses that saw her. Attempted still counts.”

Sam nodded. “Good.”

“And the cover story?” Mary asked.

“I said Sam saw a threat online. I called Ash from California and he’s setting something up if the cops check. I told him it was something that was said to Sam personally, but we don’t want him involved with the cops. He bought it.”

“That’s good,” Mary said, breathing a sigh of relief. Ash was a known gossip, but his technical skills were second to none. He would handle this for them.

“Do you know who she was?” Sam asked.

“Someone called Bethan Turner. Do you know her?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, she’s a junior.” He sighed. “I guess it makes sense. Her drug habit is almost as bad as Brady’s. She probably knew he’d be carrying more than just money. If she was desperate for a fix, she wouldn’t care about where she attacked.”

Mary nodded and patted Sam’s arm them said, “Do you want coffee?” to Dean and Bobby, who were taking seats.

“I think we need something better than that,” Bobby said.

Mary got up and went to the sideboard where Bobby kept his whiskey. She carried it to the table and then handed them all glasses from the cupboard.

Bobby poured a measure into each and said, “Tell us about it, Dean.”

Dean sipped his drink and then set the glass down. “It was exactly as Sam said it would be. The song, the knife, the hood that hid her face. Brady went out for a smoke at the exact right moment.”

Sam winced and Mary squeezed his hand again. “It’s okay,” she soothed.

Sam shook his head. “Why is this happening? Why did the dreams come true? Am I making it happen?” He looked imploringly at Bobby. “Have you heard of people that can do that?”

“No,” Bobby said firmly. “No one can make anything happen. I know a couple psychics: my friend Pamela and your mom’s friend Missouri—I’ve heard of more, too. They just see stuff. They don’t make it happen.”

Sam looked relieved, and Mary noticed Dean’s tense shoulders more relaxed, too. She understood how they felt. She’d never thought Sam could be making it happen, that was impossible, but the fact they were feeling some small relief made her feel better.

“I think you’re like them,” Bobby said. “Psychic.”

Sam shook his head jerkily. “I don’t want to be. I have to stop it. I can’t be psychic.”

“I don’t think you can stop it,” Bobby said gently.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and said, “I need to. I can’t keep seeing these things.” His eyes opened and fixed on Mary. “Why is this happening to me? Why now? What did I do wrong?”

Mary’s chest ached as she cupped his cheek in her hand. “You did _nothing_ wrong. I don’t know why this is happening, but we’re going to find out how to help you.”

“To stop it?” Sam asked hopefully.

Mary bit her lip. She was sure Bobby was right that he couldn’t stop it, but perhaps he could learn to control it. It wouldn’t stop him being psychic, but it might enable him to slow them, make them easier to handle maybe. At least they might be able to understand them better, find out where they’d come from, if this was something Sam always had in him or something she’d caused when she’d allowed the yellow-eyed demon into her home. Was it possible he’d done something to Sam?

“I’m going to get you help,” she said solemnly, her attempt at reassurance without a lie.

Sam looked into her eyes and a tear fell from one of his own. She wiped it away with her thumb.

“We’re all going to help you, Sam,” she promised. “I’m going to take care of this.”

Sam nodded and cleared his throat roughly. “Yeah. Okay.” 

Mary smiled at him and then forced herself to look at Bobby, whose gaze she could feel boring into her. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and she knew what he wasn’t letting himself say. _What was she thinking making him promises she probably couldn’t keep?_

If Mary could answer him, she would say she was doing the only thing she could. Her son was in pain and scared, and she couldn’t let him suffer if there was something she could say to ease it for him. He needed her to be his mom, and she needed to give him that.

It was her job to take care of him, and that part had been true. She would find a way to understand what was happening and, if there was a way, she would help him learn to control it. If not, she would deal with the fallout when it came. She wouldn’t leave him to face it alone.

She was a mother and she was needed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this brings Echoes to a close. I hope you enjoyed it.   
> I will post Part Two next week and hope some of you will join me there for it.   
> Clowns or Midgets xxx


End file.
